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Republican',  state  Convention 

1913 


PLATFORM  ADOPTED 

AND 

SPEECHES  MADE 

MESSRS.   SCHURMAN,    ROOT, 
HINMAN   &   WHITMAN 


AT  Carnegie  Hall,  New  York  City 
September  23rd 


'.: .' 


^/3 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGES 

Platform  Adopted 3,  8 

Resolutions 9 

Introductory  Statement  by  Chairman  William  Barnes  of 

the  State  Committee - 10,    12 

Address  of  Temporary  Chairman  President  Jacob  Gould 

Schurman 13,  52 

Address  of  the    Permanent    Chairman,    Senator    Elihu 

Root 53,  55 

Address  of  Harold  J.  Hinman 56,  67 

Address  of  Charles  S.  Whitman 68,   70 


iv!92056 


727  Seventh  avenue. 
New  York 


1      ■>  3       3     3 

.      1  J     i      •>      1 


1   -»       >   J  •     t 


Platform  of  the  Republican  Party  of  the  State 

of  New  York,  Adopted  at  New  York 

City,  September  23,  1913. 

The  Republican  party  of  the  State  of  New  York  will, 
by  its  action  here  to-night,  present  to  the  voters  its  candi- 
dates for  Chief  Judge  and  Associate  Judge  of  the  Court 
of  Appeals.  They  will  be  selected  by  a  Convention  com- 
posed of  delegates  elected  directly  for  that  purpose  in  a 
free  and  open  primary  of  all  the  voters  of  the  party  in  the 
State. 

It  is  confidently  believed  that  such  candidates  will  rep- 
resent the  true  principle  which  should  control  in  the  selec- 
tion of  public  officers,  and  that  the  men  chosen  will  be 
men  who,  by  long  and  conspicuous  public  service,  have 
proved  that  they  are  able,  upright,  faithful  and  pre-emi- 
nently fitted  for  judicial  duty  in  our  court  of  last  resort. 

The}^  should,  and  will,  represent  the  Republican  doc- 
trine which  maintains  the  independence,  authority  and 
dignity  of  the  judiciary. 

The  Republican  party  believes  that  popular  obedience 
to  the  control  of  law  and  the  impartial,  unintimidated  and 
courageous  administration  of  justice  lie  at  the  foundation 
of  our  peace,  order,  security  and  freedom. 

The  Republican  party  believes  that  States,  like  indi- 
viduals, should  be  governed  by  principles  rather  than  by 
impulse,  by  laws  rather  than  by  men.  It  believes  that  the 
great  rules  of  right  conduct  and  justice  contained  in  our 
Constitution  should  continue  to  control  and  limit  the  pow- 
ers of  government  to  the  end  that  individual  liberty  may 
be  preserved  and  our  constitutional  government  endure. 
If  the  statement  of  those  rules  be  found  at  any  time  in- 
adequate or  wrong,  then  the  statement  of  the  rules  should 
be  changed  in  due  and  orderly  manner  as  prescribed  by  the 
Constitution.  The  Republican  party  condemns  all  pro- 
posals to  intimidate  judges  in  the  discharge  of  their  duty 
by  threats  of  a  recall  in  case  of  an  unpopular  decision  and 
all  proposals  to  nullify  the  decisions  of  the  courts  at  the 


will  of  a  temporaT-y  popular  authority  tlirough  the  recall 
of  decisions, 

,  The  coming  election  will  have  a  special  significance  be- 
cfti'.se  ihe  'election  of  the  Republican  candidates  now  pre- 
sented offers  the  means — and  the  only  means — for  the 
people  of  the  State  to  repel  and  reject  the  malign  control 
of  Tammany  Hall  over  the  politics  and  government  of  the 
State  and  over  the  highest  judicial  tribunal  of  the  State. 
Tammany  is  no  longer  a  local  issue.  It  grasps  the  State ; 
it  controls  the  Democratic  party  of  the  State;  it  controls 
absolutely  the  Democratic  State  Committee.  The  candi- 
dates about  to  be  nominated  by  the  Democratic  State  Com- 
mittee will  be  named  by  Tammany  Hall.  Taking  advan- 
tage of  a  bad  law,  passed  by  a  Democratic  Legislature  and 
signed  by  a  Democratic  Governor,  no  Democratic  State 
Convention  has  been  called;  no  Democratic  Primary  has 
been  held ;  but  the  Democratic  State  Committee,  controlled 
by  Tammany  Hall,  is  to  name  the  candidates  whom  Tam- 
many selects.  To  elect  those  condidates  would  be  to  give 
approval,  prestige  and  added  power  to  Tammany  and  per- 
petuate the  present  condition  in  the  Court  of  Appeals  of 
six  Democratic  Judges  and  only  one  Republican. 

The  Republican  party  believes  that  the  government  of 
our  State  ought  no  longer  to  be  controlled  by  the  Demo- 
cratic party  as  at  present  constituted.  That  appears  when 
we  consider  the  wretched  and  humiliating  spectacle  pre- 
sented by  the  Democratic  administration  at  Albany  dur- 
ing the  past  three  years.  Never  before  in  the  history 
of  our  State  has  there  been  such  a  record  of  waste,  ineffi- 
ciency and  corruption.  Public  duty  and  public  interests 
have  been  forgotten  amid  the  undignified  and  petty  quar- 
rels of  party  factions,  and,  while  the  taxpayers'  money  has 
been  squandered,  the  honor  and  good  name  of  our  great 
State  has  been  lowered  in  the  estimation  of  the  world. 

There  has  been  great  waste  in  the  hundred  million 
dollars  appropriated  for  the  improvement  of  highways, 
while  the  highways  still  remain  in  a  deplorable  condition ; 
great  extravagance  in  the  creation  of  at  least  fifty  com- 
missions during  the  last  two  Democratic  administrations; 
in  the  unnecessary  and  wasteful  increase  of  public  offices 
and  the  salary  list;  the  moneys  of  the  State  have  been 
wasted  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  Capitol — until  the  peo- 
ple of  the  State  despair,  under  the  present  administration, 


of  the  restoration  to  the  safe  and  efficient  administration 
of  the  financial  affairs  of  the  State  which  characterized 
Republican  administrations. 

In  view  of  the  immediate  interest  of  the  whole  State 
in  checking"  the  control  of  Tammany  Hall  over  State  poli- 
tics, we  consider  it  within  the  province  of  tliis  Convention 
to  urge  upon  all  Republicans  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
and  upon  all  lovers  of  good  and  honest  government  in  that 
city,  not  merely  that  they  vote  for  the  judicial  candi- 
dates now  presented,  but  that  they  make  every  effort 
within  their  power  to  secure  the  success  of  the  anti-Tam- 
manv  local  ticket  in  New  York  Citv.  The  most  effective 
place  to  strike  Tammany  is  at  home.  The  mayoralty  and 
the  control  of  the  great  Board  of  Estimate  and  Appor- 
tionment, which  disposes  of  the  vast  revenues  of  the  city, 
should  by  all  means  be  kept  out  of  Tammany  hands.  The 
only  way  to  do  that  is  to  vote  and  work  for  the  Republican 
ticket,  headed  by  Mr.  Mitchel,  and  no  Republican  who 
fails  in  this  will  do  his  duty  to  his  State  or  to  his  Country. 

Our  election  law  is  a  disgrace  and  a  menace  to  popular 
government.  It  was  intentionally  made  complicated  and 
repressive;  the  work  of  a  crafty,  unscrupulous  Tammany 
domination.  Every  Republican  in  the  legislature  voted 
against  it.  We  commend  the  Republican  minority  in  the 
legislature  for  its  strict  devotion  to  the  pledges  made  by 
the  Republican  party  in  the  platform  adopted  at  Sara- 
toga in  1912  and  for  its  earnest  struggle  in  both  branches 
of  the  legislature  against  the  recklessness,  rapacity  and 
baseness  of  motive  which  constantly  characterized  the 
attitude  of  the  Democratic  party.  The  record  of  the  mi- 
nority has  been  so  open  and  consistent  that  it  must  be 
apparent  to  the  people  of  the  State  that  at  the  coming  elec- 
tion such  minority  should  be  transformed  into  a  majority. 
Thus  only  can  an  effective  barrier  be  established  against 
further  demoralization  of  the  State  government. 

We  pledge  anew  our  representatives  in  the  legislature 
to  the  enactment  of  laws  which  shall  afford  the  electorate 
of  the  State  the  safest  and  surest  means  for  the  expression 
and  fulfillment  of  the  will  of  the  people. 

We  reaffirm  the  declaration  of  the  platform  of  1912  in 
the  following  words : 

"It  is  the  purpose  of  the  Republican  party  to  repeal 
these  statutes,  to  relieve  the  people  of  the  State  from  the 


worse  than  useless  expenditure  of  money  and  time  which 
they  cause,  and  to  substitute  simple,  direct,  economical 
and  convenient  methods  by  which  the  voters  of  the  State 
may  express  and  make  effective  their  wishes.  To  this  end 
we  favor  the  short  ballot,  surrounding  the  primary  elec- 
tions with  the  same  safeguards  as  the  regular  elections, 
the  direct  election  of  party  committees,  the  direct  nomi- 
nation of  party  candidates  in  Congressional,  Senatorial, 
Assembly,  County  and  Municipal  subdivisions,  and  the 
direct  election  of  delegates  to  the  State  Conventions,  with 
the  right  of  party  electors  to  directly  express  their  pref- 
erence for  nominations  for  State  offices  if  they  so  desire." 

We  also  reaffirm  the  other  declarations  of  the  platform 
of  1912. 

At  a  time  when  we  are  approaching  the  submission  to 
the  people  of  the  advisability  of  holding  a  Constitutional 
Convention,  in  failing  to  provide  for  wiiich  the  Democratic 
party  violated  its  pledge,  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance 
that  the  Republican  party  should  demonstrate  its  vital- 
ity, its  determination  to  enforce  its  historic  principles  of 
true  and  tried  constitutionalism,  with  the  most  perfect 
guarantees  of  individual  freedom  and  the  inviolability  of 
the  human  right  to  protection  to  property  honestly 
acquired. 

We  reaffirm  our  faith  in  the  Republican  principle  of 
protection  to  American  workingmen,  American  industries, 
and  the  American  farmer.  We  believe  that  the  promises 
made  by  the  Democrats  to  reduce  the  cost  of  living  by 
constructing  a  tariff  on  a  different  principle  will  be  falsi- 
fied by  experience  in  the  near  future.  Inevitably  the 
Democratic  tariff  will  destroy  or  injure  many  industries, 
though  the  party  is  endeavoring  to  minimize  these  evils 
under  color  of  a  banking  and  currency  act  which,  through 
its  provisions  for  an  inflated  currency,  is  calculated  to 
give  an  artificial  stimulus  to  business. 

In  its  history  of  achievement,  the  Republican  party 
has  done  two  great,  undying  services  for  the  American 
people:  It  saved  them  from  national  disruption  and  it 
prevented  financial  disaster.  Combating  these  pernicious 
and  disloyal  principles,  it  preserved  our  national  existence 
and  our  national  solvency  and  probity.  To  the  leadership 
and  legislation  of  the  Republican  party,  the  nation  owes 
the  gold  standard,  and  the  national  banking  system.    For 


two  generations  the  Democratic  party  has  given  aid  and 
comfort  to  every  movement  for  fiat  money;  for  the  free 
coinage  of  silver,  and  for  unsound  and  unscientific  bank- 
ing. We  denounce  the  Democratic  banking  and  currency 
bill  which  has  passed  the  House  of  Kepresentatives  and 
is  now  under  consideration  by  the  Senate,  as  menacing 
the  business  interests  of  the  country  and  as  inimical  to  the 
interests  of  the  whole  people,  because  it  rests  upon  and 
embodies  three  false  principles: 

(1)  That  the  interests  of  the  owners  and  managers  of 
banks  and  those  of  business  men  and  the  public  generally 
are  in  confiict.    In  fact,  all  these  interests  are  identical. 

(2)  That  paper  money  should  be  issued  by  the  gov- 
ernment and  should  involve  the  government's  credit.  This 
is  unsound,  unscientific  and  condemned  by  experience.  It 
is  but  a  short  step  from  this  to  greenbackism. 

(3)  That  the  control  and  administration  of  the  banks 
should  be  taken  in  large  part  from  those  who  have  estab- 
lished and  own  them,  and  lodged  in  a  board  of  political 
appointees.  This  is  a  new,  radical  and  most  dangerous 
departure  from  American  practice.  It  is  as  unwise  as  it  is 
unnecessary.  Government  supervision  and  inspection  of 
national  banks  have  been  highly  successful  for  half  a  cen- 
tury, and  have  afforded  ample  protection  to  the  public  in- 
terests. 

Should  this  bill  be  enacted  into  law  in  its  present  form, 
it  would  be  easily  possible  for  the  people  to  lose  all  that 
they  gained  by  the  vetoes  of  infiation  measures  by  Presi- 
dent Grant  in  1874,  by  President  Hayes  in  1878,  by  the 
successful  fight  against  the  compulsory  purchase  of  silver . 
led  by  President  Cleveland  in  1893,  and  by  the  victory  of 
President  McKinley  on  a  gold  standard  platform  in  1896. 
The  powerful  support  of  William  Jennings  Bryan  has 
been  secured  for  this  pending  bill  by  the  surrender,  in 
form  or  fact,  of  the  sound  money  principles  for  which 
Presidents  Grant,  Hayes,  Cleveland  and  McKinley  stood, 
and  in  favor  of  the  inflation  doctrine  which  Mr.  Bryan 
made  his  own  in  1896,  and  which  has  been  overwhelmingly 
rejected  by  the  American  people. 

The  words  of  President  Cleveland,  written  to  the  Con- 
gress on  August  8th,  1893,  are  as  pertinent  now  as  on  the 
day  they  were  uttered : 

'Tliis  matter  rises  above  the  plane  of  party  politics.    It 


un 


vitally  concerns  every  business  and  calling,  and  enters 
every  houseliold  in  the  land.  .  .  .  One  of  the  greatest 
statesmen  our  country  has  known,  speaking  more  than 
fifty  years  ago,  when  a  derangement  of  the  currency  had 
caused  financial  distress,  said: 

"  'The  very  man  of  all  others  who  has  the  deepest  in- 
terest in  a  sound  currency  and  who  suffers  most  by  mis- 
chievous legislation  in  monev  matters,  is  the  man  who 
earns  his  daily  bread  by  his  daily  toil.'  " 


RESOLUTIONS : 

Hon.  Job  E.  Hedges  as  CKairman  of  the  Com- 
mittee on  Resolutions,  presented  the 
following  which  was  Adopted. 

We  instruct  the  representative  of  the  State  of  New 
York  on  the  National  Committee  to  urge  that  a  national 
convention  be  called  as  soon  as  practicable  to  change  the 
party  rules  so  as  . 

(1)  To  provide  that  in  the  call  for  future  national 
conventions  delegates  are  to  be  chosen  in  each  State  in  the 
manner  preferred  by  the  Republican  voters  in  such  State; 
we,  however,  urge  the  continuance  of  the  Congressional 
District  as  the  unit  of  representation;  and 

(2)  To  insure  that  representation  in  national  conven- 
tions shall  hereafter  be  based  more  nearly  on  the  Repub- 
lican vote  actually  cast  in  the  several  States  and  Congres- 
sional Districts,  which  just  principle  received  the  unani- 
mous support  of  the  delegation  from  the  State  of  New 
York  at  the  National  Convention  of  1908 ;  and 

(3)  To  amend  the  rules  relating  to  party  procedure  in 
such  other  respects  as  may  be  requisite. 


Remarks  of  William  Barnes,   Chairman  of  the 

Republican  State  Committee,  on  calling 

the  Convention  to  order. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  business  of  this  convention, 
it  is  proper  that  I  should,  explain  the  reasons  why  the 
State  Committee,  having  the  power  to  make  nominations, 
issued  the  call  for  your  assembling. 

The  Election  Law  provides  that  in  the  odd-numbered 
years  candidates  for  state  offices  shall  be  nominated  by 
the  State  Committees  of  the  several  Parties,  and  not  by 
Convention,  unless  by  rule  of  a  Convention  the  State 
Committee  shall  have  been  disqualified  from  making  such 
nominations.  No  such  rule  has  been  adopted  by  a  Repub- 
lican State  Convention.  Therefore,  under  the  Election 
Law  the  State  Committee  of  the  Republican  Party  has 
the  power  to  nominate  this  Fall  a  candidate  for  Chief 
Judge  of  the  Court  of  Appeals  to  suceeed  Judge  Cullen, 
and  an  Associate  Judge  of  the  Court  of  Appeals  to  succeed 
Judge  Gray. 

This  situation  confronts  the  other  political  parties 
likewise.  The  respective  State  Committees  of  those  parties 
have  the  power  to  nominate  the  candidates  of  those  parties 
for  the  judgeships  that  will  become  vacant  on  January 
1st,  1914. 

Recognizing  that  the  nomination  of  two  candidates  for 
offices  of  supreme  importance  by  the  State  Committees  of 
the  polictial  parties  did  not  afford  opportunity  for  the  en- 
rolled electors  of  any  of  those  parties  to  express  themselves, 
early  in  the  legislative  session  of  1913  I  prepared  and  sent 
to  Senator  Brown  and  Assemblyman  Hinman,  the  Repub- 
lican leaders  in  two  branches  of  the  Legislature,  an  amend- 
ment to  the  Election  Law  which  provided  that  official 
State  Conventions  might  be  held  in  odd-numbered  years. 
The  passage  of  this  bill  would  have  made  it  possible  to 
take  from  the  State  Committees  of  the  respective  parties 

10 


the  power  to  nominate  the  candidates  for  judges  this  Fall. 
This  was  all  the  more  desirable  because  the  State  Com- 
mittees of  the  Republican,  Democratic,  Socialist,  Pro- 
hibition and  Independence  League  Parties  were  elected 
in  Marcli,  1912 — eighteen  months  ago — while  the  Pro- 
gressive State  Committee,  which  now  has  the  power  to 
make  nominations,  was  never  elected  at  any  primary 
election,  but  was  selected  by  the  State  Chairman  of  that 
movement  in  July,  1912. 

Its  introducers  endeavored  to  secure  consideration  of 
this  measure,  but  it  slept  in  Committee. 

During  the  regular  session,  I  wrote  to  Senator  Wag- 
ner, the  leader  of  the  majority  in  the  State  Senate,  and  to 
Speaker  Smith,  of  the  Assembly,  urging  the  passage  of  this 
proper  amendment  to  the  Election  Law,  but  never  received 
from  either  of  those  legislators  any  reply. 

In  order  that  the  responsibility  for  the  nomination  of 
the  Republican  candidates  for  Chief  Judge  of  the  Court 
of  Appeals  and  Associate  Judge,  despite  the  failure  of  this 
measure,  might  not  rest  upon  the  State  Committee  of  the 
Republican  Party,  but  upon  the  enrolled  electorate  of  the 
Republican  Party  itself,  a  meeting  of  the  State  Committee 
was  held  on  July  15th,  at  which  time  the  Call  for  the 
Convention  was  issued. 

The  Election  law  defines  a  Convention  as  follows : 

13.  "The  term  ^convention'  means  an  assem- 
blage of  delegates,  elected  in  accordance  with  the 
provisions  of  this  chapter  representing  a  political 
party,  duly  convened  for  the  purpose  of  nomina- 
ting candidates  for  public  office,  electing  delegates 
to  other  conventions,  electing  officers  for  party 
organizations,  or  for  the  transaction  of  any  busi- 
ness relating  to  the  affairs  or  conduct  of  the 
party." 

You  therefore  are  a  regularly  elected  Convention 
under  the  definition  stated  in  the  statute,  and  have  the 
power  to  recommend  to  the  State  Committee  the  names 
of  two  candidates  for  judges  of  the  Court  of  Appeals  and 
to  transact  such  other  business  as  you  in  your  supreme 

11 


authority,  as  the  representatives  of  the  Kepiiblican  Party 
elected  a  week  ago  to-day,  may  so  desire;  and  the  State 
Committee  is  in  honor  bound  to  nominate  for  Chief  Judge 
of  the  Court  of  Appeals  and  Associate  Judge  of  the  Court 
of  Appeals,  whomever  this  Convention  may  determine  to 
recommend. 

I  am  requested  by  the  State  Committee  to  present  for 
your  consideration  as  your  temporary  Chairman,  Jacob 
Gould  Schurman,  of  Tompkins.  Are  there  any  other 
nominations? 


12 


Address    of    Dr.    Jacob   Gould   Schurman,    as 
Temporary  Chairman. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Convention^  Fellow  Republicans  : 

I  am  deeply  sensible  of  the  honor  of  having  been  chosen 
as  temporary  chairman  of  this  convention.  May  I  express 
here  and  now  my  pleasure  and  grateful  appreciation. 

At  the  same  time  I  trust  that  I  may  be  excused  another 
remark  still  more  personal.  After  a  year's  absence  from 
home  I  am  delighted  and  thankful  to  be  back  in  America 
once  more.  It  has  been  my  good  fortune  to  spend  a  year  in 
Greece,  the  foutain-head  of  all  our  civilization — in  Athens, 
"the  mother,"  as  Milton  called  her,  "the  mother  of  arts  and 
eloquence,"  and  in  this  year  I  have  seen  the  Greek  nation 
undergo  a  new  birth  and  stamp  with  indelible  impress  an 
epoch  in  human  history.  I  have  seen  the  modern  Greeks 
rival  the  courage  and  endurance  of  their  ancestors,  whose 
exploits  at  Marathon  and  Salamis  and  Platea  have  made 
those  places  forever  synonymous  in  human  history  with 
valor  and  heroism.  I  am  glad  to  recall  that  America  has 
had  some  share  in  that  glory.  For  the  Greeks  who  re- 
turned from  this  country — and  they  were  counted  by  tens 
of  thousands — to  join  the  national  army  showed — as  I  was 
assured  by  the  very  highest  authority — that  they  had 
learned  something  in  America  which  made  them  peculiarly 
excellent  soldiers. 

WHAT  AMERICA  STANDS  FOR. 

Yet  in  spite  of  the  year's  interesting  and  even  thrilling 
experiences  I  am  delighted  to  be  home  again.  One  may 
temporarily  reside  in  other  countries  with  profit  and  satis- 
faction. But  for  us  Americans  there  is  only  one  country 
in  the  world  to  live  in.  The  supreme  object  of  our  hearts' 
affection  is  America.  In  our  reason  as  in  our  feelings  she 
stands  without  a  rival.  And  this  unchallenged  supremacy 
— I  had  almost  said  this  adoration — is  not  merely  the  prod- 
uct of  a  patriotism  which  the  citizens  of  other  countries 
might  equally  possess.  No,  there  is  something  peculiar, 
something  altogether  unique,  in  our  devotion  to  America. 


What  other  country  means,  what  other  country  has  ever 
meant,  so  much  for  the  well-being  of  mankind?  Has  not 
America  always  spelt  Promise  and  Opportunity?  Here 
millions  and  millions  of  human  beings  have  come  to  find — 
and  they  have  found — not  only  civil  and  religious  liberty, 
but  also  improved  material  conditions,  greater  well-being 
and  happiness  and  unlimited  extension  of  the  means  of 
education  and  intelligence. 

I  hope  no  one  will  think  this  description  too  partial.  I 
know  that  for  some  time  past  it  has  been  the  fashion  among 
certain  Americans  to  criticise  America.  So  far  as  there 
are  just  grounds  for  complaint  in  existing  economic  and 
political  conditions,  I  shall  take  notice  of  these  animadver- 
sions hereafter.  But  we  cannot  estimate  such  criticism  at 
its  true  value  without  a  correct  perspective.  And  this  abid- 
ing standard  of  judgment  we  shall  find  in  the  fullest  recog- 
nition of  the  incomparable  greatness  and  glory  of  America. 
That  is  the  indubitable  fact,  whatever  else  may  be  doubted. 
That  is  the  basal  condition,  whatever  details  need  reform 
and  amendment.  We  stand  proudly  on  what  we  are  and 
what  we  have  already  achieved,  and  we  challenge  the  critics 
to  point  to  an  equal  record  in  the  old  world  since  history 
began.  Nor  do  we  claim  that  Americans  shall  be  judges. 
We  leave  it  to  Europeans  to  determine.  Let  the  most  com- 
petent among  them  judge.  Who  among  them  has  most  ex- 
haustively studied,  most  profoundly  apprehended,  and  most 
veraciously  interpreted  the  United  States  of  America?  No 
one  in  either  continent  doubts  it  is  James  Bryce.  Well, 
James  Bryce  published  in  1911  a  new  edition  of  his  "Amer- 
ican Commonwealth,"  and  here  is  the  last  sentence  of  that 
monumental  work : 

"That  America  marks  the  highest  level,  not  only  of 
material  well-being,  but  of  intelligence  and  happiness, 
which  the  race  has  yet  attained,  will  be  the  judgment  of 
those  who  look  not  at  the  favored  few  for  whose  benefit 
the  world  seems  hitherto  to  have  framed  its  institutions, 
but  at  the  whole  body  of  the  people." 

NEED  OF  FURTHER  PROGRESS. 

Not  indeed  that  our  Republic  has  already  attained.  No 
one,  I  trust,  will  lay  such  flattering  unction  to  his  soul. 
Certainly  nothing  could  be  further  from  my  own  thought. 


What  remains  to  be  done  may  well  be  not  less  arduous 
than  the  task  so  heroically  performed  by  the  men  who 
founded  tlie  Republic  or  the  men  who  under  Lincoln  sav^td 
it  from  disruption.  The  life  of  a  nation  is  measured  by 
centuries  and  even  millenniums,  and  each  generation  has 
its  own  peculiar  tasks  and  problems.  It  was  to  hearten 
and  encourage  you  in  your  efforts  to  discharge  the  duties 
of  your  day  and  generation  that  I  cited  James  Bryce's  tes- 
timony to  the  high  and  incomparable  character  of  the  rec- 
ord which  our  Republic  had  already  made.  I  wanted  you 
to  feel  that  America  had  done  well.  Though  much  remains, 
much  has  been  accomplished.  We  are  on  the  right  path, 
and  we  liave  made  good  progress.  And  my  belief  is  that 
what  has  already  been  achieved  is  an  earnest  of  a  fuller  fu- 
ture— a  pledge  of  American  devotion  to  those  ideals  which 
have  made  the  Republic  great  and  a  promise  of  American 
determination  to  pursue  those  ideals  still  more  zealously 
and  to  realize  them  still  more  completely  in  the  nation's 
life. 

You  see  I  believe  in  progress.  But  I  yield  to  no  man 
in  admiration  of.  the  past  achievements  of  the  American 
Republic.  I  do  not,  of  course,  think  that  the  fathers  set 
the  Republic  agoing  in  such  a  way  that  it  would  hence- 
forth take  care  of  itself,  that  they  constructed  a  miracu- 
lous machine  and  endowed  it  with  perpetual  motion  so 
that  future  generations  would  have  nothing  to  do,  apart 
perhaps  from  an  occasional  lubrication,  but  passively  to 
admire  the  perfection  of  its  operation  and  lazily  glorify  its 
inventors.  But  no  one  can  surpass  me  in  admiration  of 
the  American  Constitution,  or  in  honor  and  reverence  for 
the  men  who  devised  it.  I  do  not  know  in  all  the  long  and 
glorious  annals  of  mankind  where  to  match  either  that 
document  or  that  assembly  of  statesmen.  But  time  is  the 
changing  form  which  invests  everything  earthly  and  hu- 
man. And,  as  Bacon  wisely  observed,  "what  man  does  not 
alter  for  the  better  time  alters  for  the  worse."  In  the  end, 
indeed,  time  prevails  over  the  best  human  efforts.  With 
the  lapse  of  ages  the  greedy  maw  of  time  devours  every- 
thing but  immortal  souls  and  eternal  principles. 

THE  AMERICAN  CONSTITUTION. 

I  believe,  however,  that  there  is  an  indestructible  prin- 
ciple— the  principle  of  justice — embodied  in  the  Constitu- 

15 


tion  of  the  United  States.  Whatever  else  decays  this  will 
live  and  shine  forever  in  the  political  firmament.  But  the 
Constitution  also  contains  subordinate  provisions  which 
are  liable  to  fall  into  disuse  and  pass  away,  as  some  of 
them,  notably  the  electoral  college,  have  already  done.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  fundamental  institutions  created  by  the 
Constitution  for  the  establishment  and  maintenance  of  a 
popular  representative  government  may  well  survive  for 
hundreds  or  even  thousands  of  years,  provided  they  are 
wisely  modified,  when  modification  becomes  necessary,  to 
meet  the  changing  conditions  and  satisfy  the  new  aspira- 
tions and  needs  of  the  successive  generations  who  use 
them. 

No  constitution  ever  was  made,  no  constitution  ever 
will  be  made,  once  and  for  all;  it  is  ever  a-making  by  the 
creative  mind  of  man  in  response  to  the  necessities  imposed 
upon  him  by  new  physical  and  economic  conditions,  by  new 
social  organizations,  by  new  intellectual  discoveries  and 
principles,  and  by  new  moral  ideals  and  sentiments.  The 
state  is  an  organism;  and  a  political  organism,  like  a  bio- 
logical organism,  moves  and  lives  and  has  its  being  only  by 
continuous  adaptation  and  adjustment  to  its  environment. 
While  the  organism  remains  the  same,  it  retains  its  iden- 
tity amid  continuous  modifications  both  of  structure  and 
function.  In  the  case  of  that  political  organism  which  we 
call  the  State,  the  number,  character,  and  extent  of  these 
modifications  are  determined  by  the  changes  which  the  en- 
vironment undergoes  in  its  different  factors — physical, 
economic,  social,  intellectual  and  moral. 

PHYSICAL  AND  ECONOMIC  CHANGES. 

When  one  thinks  of  the  things  which  have  altered  the 
conditions  of  life  in  America,  w^hich  have  changed  the  face 
of  the  world,  indeed,  since  the  days  of  Washington  and 
Madison  and  Hamilton,  one  cannot  repress  a  feeling  of 
astonishment  that  the  Constitution  they  gave  us  has  been 
touched  so  lightly  by  the  transforming  hand  of  time.  With 
the  exception  of  the  amendments  brought  about  by  the 
Civil  War,  it  has  remained  up  to  the  present  year  abso- 
lutely unchanged.  And  yet  what  colossal,  what  revolu- 
tionary changes,  have  taken  place  in  our  economic,  indus- 
trial, social  and  intellectual  life  and  environment !    Taken 

16 


comprehensive  than  all  the  similar  changes  effected  by  the 
human  race  not  merely  in  any  other  century,  not  merely 
in  a  millennium,  but  in  all  the  ages  since  human  life  on 
earth  began.  Think  of  some  of  them.  Science,  invention, 
machinery,  the  use  and  control  of  steam  and  electricity  and 
the  other  powers  of  nature,  vast  accumulations  of  capital, 
the  organization  of  armies  of  laborers,  strikes  and  lock- 
outs, universal  suffrage,  cheap  books  and  newspapers,  radi- 
cal theories  of  democracy  and  socialism — these  are  changes 
patent  to  the  most  superficial  observer,  changes  of 
which,  while  some  have  completely  revolutionized  the 
old  methods  of  production  and  transportation,  all  have 
combined  to  create  a  new  environment  to  which  our  con- 
stitutions, laws  and  political  institutions  are  as  yet  only 
inadequately  adapted. 

PROGRESSIVES  AND  STAND-PATTERS. 

The  adaptation  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States 
and  of  the  several  States  to  this  new  physical,  economic, 
financial,  intellectual,  moral  and  social  environment  will 
be  the  principal  task  of  American  statesmanship  for  some 
years  to  come.  A  Progressive  is  one  who  is  conscious  of 
the  imminence,  of  the  inevitableness,  of  this  imperious 
problem  and  exerts  his  best  efforts  towards  its  solution. 
A  stand-patter  is  one  who  is  unaware  of  the  existence  of 
the  problem,  who  is  entirely  satisfied  with  existing  condi- 
tions, who  believes — honestly  believes — that  one  should  let 
well  enough  alone,  and  who  regards  Progressives  as  a  pes- 
tiferous set  of  people  bent  on  disturbing  the  peace  of  the 
community. 

There  are  two  types  of  the  Progressive.  Both  agree  in 
their  point  of  departure :  they  are  dissatisfied  with  existing 
conditions,  and  they  undertake  a  forward  movement.  They 
differ,  however,  both  in  the  rate  of  their  movement  and 
in  the  direction  of  their  goal.  The  one,  whom  I  will  call 
the  Evolutionary  Progressive,  insists  on  gradual  develop- 
ment, on  the  maintenance  of  existing  institutions  in  their 
essential  features,  and,  when  they  need  modification  on  tlie 
attainment  of  a  final  product  which  is  not  a  break  with 
the  original  derived  from  past  experience,  but  only  an  im- 
provement of  it,  the  realization  of  the  historic  type  witli 

17 


together,  the  changes  of  that  century  are  vaster  and  more 
its  faulty  excrescences  sloughed  off.  The  other  type  of 
Progressive  demands  radical  and  sweeping  changes.  He 
wants  to  be  on  the  move,  no  matter  in  what  direction  or 
with  what  velocity,  so  be  he  gets  away  from  the  defects 
he  sees  in  existing  laws  or  institutions.  In  the  pregnant 
language  of  Shakespeare,  "his  determinate  voyage  is  mere 
extravagancy."  I  call  him  the  Catastrophic  Progressive. 
And  this  designation  seems  apt  and  appropriate.  It  was 
the  name  applied  to  those  Progressives  in  science  before  the 
time  of  Darwin  who  believed  in  catastrophes — that  is,  in 
violent,  subversive  and  widely  extended  changes  in  the 
natural  world.  And  the  political  use  of  this  scientific 
term  is  not  rendered  inapposite  by  the  fact  that  in  ordi- 
nary language  the  word  ''catastrophe"  implies  disaster. 

THE  CATASTROPHIC  PROGRESSIVE. 

The  Catastrophic  Progressive  reminds  me  of  a  motor- 
boat  I  was  provided  with  not  long  ago  to  board  a  great 
steamer  in  a  European  harbor.    The  intention  Avas  to  give 
me  something  better  than  the  other  passengers  enjoyed. 
And  I  must  say  that  their  rowboats  looked  very  common- 
place beside  our  motor-boat,  with  its  awnings,  its  cushions 
and  its  fine  American  flag.     The  rowboats,  however,  with 
moderate  speed  went  directly  to  the  great  steamer,  carrying 
safely  and  comfortably  their  precious  freight  of  human 
lives.    Our  motor-boat  started  at  a  speed  which  left  them 
all  behind,  suddenly  stopped,  then  turned  in  an  opposite 
direction,  carrying  menace  to  the  boats  moored  along  the 
shore,  once  more  made  a  dash  for  the  steamer  and  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  away  beyond  her,  then,  with  imminent 
danger  to  our  lives,  performed  a  sudden  gyration,  shot 
through  the  water  like  a  torpedo-destroyer  and  stopped 
stock-still  within  fifty  yards  of  the  steamer.     I  insisted 
on  rowing  the  rest  of  the  way  to  avoid  a  catastrophe.    And 
somehow  we  finally  found  ourselves  on  board  the  steamer. 
It  was,  however,  a  narrow  escape.     And  I  shall  always 
think  of  that  motor-boat,  with  its  alternations  of  rush  and 
stand-still,  now  in  one  direction  and  now  in  another,  with 
impulse  inspiring  the  dynamo  and  passion  controlling  the 
helm,  as  a  perfect  example  of  the  Catastrophic  Progres- 
sive in  politics. 

18 


A  CONSTITUTIONAL  PROGRESSIVE  PARTY. 

We  want  to  be  on  our  guard  against  the  Catastrophic 
Progressive.  But  we  want  equally  to  be  on  our  guard 
against  the  Conservative  who  has  become  atrophied.  Since 
all  the  conditions  under  which  we  live  and  work  and  make 
our  living  are  changing,  our  laws  and  political  institutions, 
which  are  only  the  final  and  formal  regulation  of  the  life 
of  the  community,  must  of  necessity  adapt  themselves  to 
the  new  environment  of  the  twentieth  century.  A  stand- 
pat  Conservative  party  in  politics  is  in  tliis  age  of  eco- 
nomic, industrial,  social  and  intellectual  change  a  sheer 
absurdity.  A  political  party  needs,  indeed,  its  conserva- 
tive elements  to  safeguard  its  rich  inheritance  from  the 
past  as  it  needs  its  radical  elements  to  stir  it  into  motion 
in  response  to  the  appeals  of  the  present;  but  without  a 
great  body  of  Evolutionary  Progressives  to  shape  its 
course  and  control  its  tendencies  a  political  party  will  be 
powerless  to  discharge  the  functions  which  twentieth  cen- 
tury politics  in  America  render  imperative.  Some  of  these 
duties  are  towards  the  Federal  Government,  others  to- 
wards the  States,  but  all  alike  towards  the  American 
people, 

CHANGES  IN  CONSTITUTION. 

I  mentioned  a  little  while  ago  the  Federal  Constitution 
and  its  long  resistance  to  change.  I  purposely  postponed 
mention  of  the  fact,  to  which  I  now  call  your  attention, 
that  in  this  very  year  we  have  witnessed  the  triumph  of 
two  amendments.  The  nature  of  those  amendments  seems 
to  me  highly  suggestive  of  the  political  issues  with  which 
the  spirit  of  the  age  is  in  travail.  One  of  them  authorizes 
the  Federal  Government  to  levy  a  tax  on  incomes.  This 
reform  testifies  to  a  deep  and  widely  prevalent  feeling 
among  the  American  people  that  the  wealth  of  the  coun- 
try has  not  in  the  past  contributed  its  fair  share  to  the  ex- 
penses of  government.  The  other  amendment  provides  for 
the  election  of  United  States  senators  by  the  people  of  the 
several  States  instead  of  by  their  legislatures.  By  this 
change,  which  invests  the  people  with  an  electoral  func- 
tion hitherto  exercised  by  their  representatives,  the  area 
of  direct  popular  government  is  extended,  without,  how- 
ever, imperiling  the  representative  character  of  our  Re- 
public. 

19 


THE   INCOME   TAX  AMENDMENT. 

Both  these  amendments  were  resisted  by  the  Conserva- 
tives. For  my  own  part  I  advocated  them.  They  seemed 
to  me  wise,  just  and  moderate  reforms  which  no  Evolu- 
tionary Progressive  who  had  thought  the  matter  out  could 
for  a  moment  have  hesitated  to  support.  The  income  tax 
amendment  is  simply  a  new  application  of  that  principle  of 
justice  which  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  aims  to 
express  and  embody.  The  consuming  classes  contribute  to 
the  expenses  of  the  Federal  Government  through  the  cus- 
toms duties  which  are  levied  on  the  commodities  thev  use. 
Comparatively  speaking,  this  burden  falls  with  greater  se- 
verity upon  the  poor  than  upon  the  rich  and  well-to-do. 
And  the  income  tax  is  a  method  to  redress  this  inequality. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  economic  theory  it  is  merely  an 
application  of  the  great  canon  of  taxation  that  each  shall 
pay  according  to  his  ability.    And  that  is  just. 

I  recognize,  however,  that  in  the  use  it  makes  of  this 
amendment  of  the  Constitution  Congress  might  practice  in- 
justice. Not  indeed  that  a  graduated  income  tax  properly 
levied  is  not  right  and  fair.  But  if  in  the  drafting  of  such 
a  statute  Congress  so  arranged  exemptions  and  burdens  as 
to  favor  some  sections  against  others,  or  some  citizens 
against  others,  it  would  be  guilty  of  doing  injustice.  And 
it  looks  as  though  the  pending  Income  Tax  bill,  which  the 
Democrats  are  going  to  enact  into  law,  sinned  in  both  these 
respects.  Indeed,  I  fear  it  is  pre-eminently  a  discrimina- 
tion by  the  South  and  West  against  three  or  four  eastern 
states,  and,  above  all,  against  our  own  State  of  New  York. 

POPULAR  ELECTION  OF  SENATORS. 

The  Income  Tax  amendment  in  itself,  however,  is  a 
new  development  and  enlargement  of  justice  in  national 
affairs.  The  other  new  amendment  of  the  Federal  Consti- 
tution, that  providing  for  the  popular  election  of  senators, 
is  a  wise  and  salutary  extension  of  the  people's  right  to 
govern  themselves.  The  Conservative  declares  it  lowers 
the  dignity  of  the  office.  I  ask  if  any  office  can  have  a 
higher  dignity  and  consecration  than  that  derived  from 
express  and  immediate  election  by  the  people?  But  we  are 
told  that  the  people  cannot,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  exercise 
the  choice  which  the  new  constitutional  amendment  vests 

20 


in  them.  Why  not?  Is  it  harder  for  the  people  to  elect 
a  Federal  senator  than  a  State  governor?  The  one  func- 
tion seems  to  me  as  easy,  and  I  may  add  as  natural,  for  the 
people  themselves  as  the  other. 

It  is  argued  that  such  direct  election  of  United  States 
senators  by  the  people  themselves  is  in  violation  of  the 
representative  character  of  our  Republic.  This  objection 
seems  to  me  to  involve  confusion  of  thought.  The  Ameri- 
can Republic  is  indeed  a  representative  government,  and 
not  a  direct  democracy.  It  differs  in  this  respect  from  the 
direct  democracies  of  the  ancient  world.  The  founders  of 
the  Constitution  meditated  long  and  wisely  on  that  dif- 
ference, and  they  acted  with  rare  political  sagacity  and 
wisdom  in  establishing  for  us  a  representative  republic. 
But  it  is  absurd  in  itself,  and  a  contradiction  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  self-government,  to  maintain  that  because  we 
choose  to  have  representatives  to  act  for  us  where  we  can- 
not act  for  ourselves  we  are  also  under  obligation  to  turn 
over  to  them  business  which  we  can  do  for  ourselves.  It 
should  be  unnecessary  to  point  out  that  there  is  no  such 
absurd  and  undemocratic  implication  either  in  the  federal 
constitution  or  in  the  scheme  of  government  which  it  set 
up.  And,  for  my  own  part,  devoted  as  I  am  to  the  princi- 
ple and  practice  of  representative  government,  and  ready 
as  I  am  to  defend  it  against  the  dangerous  innovations  of 
direct  democracy,  it  is,  nevertheless,  a  first  principle  of 
my  political  philosophy  that  the  people  should  not  dele- 
gate to  representatives  political  functions  which  it  is  feas- 
ible and  convenient  for  them  directly  to  perform  them- 
selves. The  people  will  do  their  own  business  quite  as 
well  as  any  agents.  For  these  reasons  I  have  advocated 
the  amendment  of  the  Federal  Constitution  providing  for 
the  popular  election  of  senators. 

FURTHER  CHANGES  POSSIBLE. 

From  what  I  have  already  said  it  will  not  surprise  yon 
to  hear  that  I  look  forward  to  further  changes  of  the  Fed- 
eral Constitution.  The  two  amendments  so  recently  adopted 
do  not  exhaust  the  demands  which  the  political  genius  of 
the  twentieth  century  is  making  on  the  work  of  the  eight- 
eenth. The  Constitution,  indeed,  deserves  all  the  venera- 
tion with  which  (at  least  until  very  recently)  Americans 

21 


have  regarded  it.  It  is,  as  Mr.  Gladstone  truly  said,  the 
most  wonderful  instrument  of  government  ever  forged  by 
the  brain  of  men.  One  knows  not  whether  to  admire  most 
the  intrinsic  excellence  of  the  scheme,  or  its  happy  com- 
bination of  definiteness  in  principle  with  elasticity  in  de- 
tails, or  even  its  simple  and  statuesque  form  and  the 
brevity  and  precision  of  its  language.  It  was  admirably 
adapted  too  to  the  circumstances  and  needs  of  the  people 
and  of  the  age.  And  yet  so  deeply  and  generously  was  it 
rooted  in  the  soil  of  the  historic  past  that  it  has  endured 
with  scarcely  a  change  to  the  present  year. 

But  a  point  has  now  been  reached  where  further  adap- 
tation to  the  conditions  of  modern  life  may  become  neces- 
sary. The  fundamental  difference  between  Americans  of 
the  eighteenth  and  Americans  of  the  twentieth  century  is 
that  men  and  women  now  live  and  work  and  travel  and 
visit  and  trade  not  in  restricted  and  separated  localities, 
but  in  the  entire  compass  of  the  United  States  of  America, 
throughout  which  for  social  and  commercial  purposes  state 
lines,  except  as  legal  survivals,  have  altogether  disap- 
peared. Such  has  been  the  unifying  force  of  science  and 
invention,  of  railways  and  telegraphs,  of  commerce  and 
finance,  of  farming  and  manufacturing,  which  have  settled 
the  vacant  spaces  of  the  Continent  and  dotted  it  with  cities 
like  the  centres  of  a  nervous  organism.  These  physical 
and  economic  forces  are  permanent  forces  whose  potency 
in  the  long  future  is  destined  to  be  still  greater  than  it 
has  been  in  the  comparatively  short  period  since  they  first 
came  into  operation.  For  all  social  and  commercial  pur- 
poses they  have,  however,  already  made  the  American 
people  one  people.  And  as  modern  civilization  has  made 
the  whole  globe  a  smaller  place  than  the  Mediterranean 
world  of  classical  antiquity,  so  it  has  made  our  continental 
republic  of  to-day  a  smaller  country  than  the  fringe  of 
'scattered,  separated  and  self-contained  Atlantic  States 
which  adopted  the  Federal  Constitution.  You  can  go  from 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  in  half  the  time  Washington 
would  have  taken  to  go  from  Boston  to  Charleston,  and 
the  cost  of  transportation  is  much  less,  while  your  comfort 
will  be  vastly  greater.  Thus,  in  spite  of  our  half-hundred 
different  commonwealths  the  people  of  the  United  States 
are  being  drawn  ever  closer  together,  and  they  now  feel 
themselves  more  than  ever  before  one  social  and  commer- 

22 


cial  body  with  all  parts  interlaced,  inter-related  and  inter- 
dependent. 

It  was,  of  course,  impossible  for  the  great  men  who 
drafted  the  Federal  Constitution  to  foresee  all  the  changes 
which  were  to  transform  the  face  of  the  modern  world. 
But  it  is  obvious  that  this  generation  must  find  a  means 
to  bring  the  organization  of  the  national  government  into 
greater  harmony  with  its  new  economic  and  social  environ- 
ment. This  is  the  great  task  to  which  Progressives — I 
mean,  Evolutionary  and  Constitutional  Progressives — 
should  now  address  themselves.  Above  all,  the  organs  of 
our  national  commerce — not  only  the  railways,  but  also  the 
industrial  and  trading  corporations — must  somehow  be 
brought  under  the  legal  regulation  of  the  nation,  alike  for 
the  protection  of  the  public  and  for  their  own  protection 
and  efficiency.  It  will  be  a  difficult  problem  to  draw  this 
new  line  between  the  jurisdiction  of  the  States  and  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  nation.  But  the  line  must  be  drawn. 
It  is  absolutely  necessary  that  the  national  organism  be 
adjusted  to  the  environment  in  which  it  lives  and  moves 
and  has  its  being.  Some  extension  of  federal  authority 
has  become  inevitable.  Perhaps  this  can  be  secured  through 
further  judicial  interpretation  of  the  commerce  clause  of 
the  Constitution.  If  not,  we  shall  have  to  resort  to  amend- 
ment of  the  Constitution.  And  the  two  amendments 
adopted  this  year  show  that  the  people  are  ready  to  alter 
the  Constitution,  not  indeed  with  rashness  or  levity,  but 
deliberately  and  on  clear  and  indisputable  grounds  of  pub- 
lic good.  In  the  present  instance  nothing  would  be  needed 
but  to  write  into  the  organic  law  of  the  land  a  recogni- 
tion of  that  commercial  unification  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States  which  new  physical  and  economic  forces 
have  brought  about  since  the  adoption  of  the  Federal  Con- 
stitution. The  absence  of  such  a  provision  creates  fric- 
tion between  our  governmental  agencies  and  impairs  their 
efficiency  and  menaces  their  integrity.  Meanwhile  the  peo- 
ple suffer  loss  and  injury,  as  must  always  be  the  case  when 
the  organism  of  government  is  not  adapted  to  the  environ- 
ment over  which  it  must  exercise  swav. 

STATE  GOVERNMENT. 

I  turn  from  the  Nation  to  the  State.     I  say  nothing 
about  the  Tariff,  for  conflicting  theories  are  soon  to  be  sub- 

23 


mitted  to  the  test  of  practical  experience.  And  I  say  noth- 
ing abont  Banking  and  Currency  Keform,  because  it  is  only 
fair  to  wait  till  the  party  in  power  has  produced  the  scheme 
which  is  now  in  process  of  incubation.  Meanwhile  our 
State  Governments  abound  in  problems,  and  to  some  of 
them  I  now  invite  your  attention. 

I  note  in  the  first  place  that  our  State  Governments  do 
not  suffer  as  the  National  Government  suffers,  from  any 
inadequacy  in  the  grant  of  constitutional  powers  to  the 
functions  demanded  of  government  in  this  twentieth  cen- 
tury. It  is  with  the  States  not  a  question  of  the  amplitude 
of  their  powers,  but  of  the  use  they  make  of  them.  And, 
generally  speaking,  the  government  of  our  States  is  no- 
toriously below  the  level  of  the  government  of  the  Nation. 

Nor  again  have  the  changes  wrought  by  modern  civili- 
zation created  a  chasm  between  the  State  Governments  and 
their  physical  and  economic  environment.  The  trouble 
with  the  State  Governments  is  that  they  have  not  been 
brought  up  to  the  level  of  our  practical  knowledge,  com- 
mon sense,  and  moral  ideas  and  principles.  Even  in  this 
great  State  of  New  York  our  government  has  fallen  low. 
And  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  the  fault  is  not  in  our 
stars,  but  in  ourselves,  that  we  are  underlings. 

THE  THREE  R's  OF  DEMOCRACY. 

Now  democracy  must  learn  to  make  its  government 
honest  and  efficient.  And  the  place  to  begin  is  in  our  local 
and  State  governments.  We  say  that  all  education  rests 
on  the  three  R's.  Democracy  also  has  its  three  R's.  It  is 
essential  to  democratic  government  that  it  be  representa- 
tive, responsive  and  responsible.  It  must  be  representa- 
tive— that  is,  its  agents  must  be  genuine  exponents  of  the 
popular  mind  and  will  and  not  attorneys  for  special  inter- 
ests or  manipulators  or  creatures  of  a  party  machine.  It 
must  be  responsive — that  is,  its  agents  must  move  and  act 
in  harmony  with  the  deliberate  convictions  and  settled 
sentiments  of  the  people.  It  must  be  responsible — that  i», 
its  agents  must  do  their  duty  without  fear  or  favor  under 
a  constant  sense  of  accountability  to  the  people  whose  in- 
terests have  been  entrusted  to  them  and  whose  commis- 
sion they  have  the  honor  of  holding. 

A  despair,  however,  seems  to  have  settled  on  the  public 

24 


mind  in  reference  to  the  question  of  State  and  local  offi- 
cials. Such  pessimism  is  absolutely  foreign  to  the  Ameri- 
can spirit.  And  its  existence  points  to  some  potent  force 
as  generator.  That  force  undoubtedly  is  the  baleful  influ- 
ence wiiich  the  arrogant  political  machines  have  exercised 
in  politics. 

PARTY  ORGANIZATION. 

Party  organization  is  not  only  natural  and  legitimate, 
it  is  also  necessary  and  desirable.  And  nowhere  in  the 
world  have  political  parties  been  organized  so  elaborately 
and  effectively  as  in  the  United  States.  This  is  due  to  the 
multitude  of  our  elective  offices  and  the  frequency  of  our 
elections.  The  task  of  nominating  candidates  for  these 
offices  was  one  which  the  individual  citizens  could  not  per- 
form, or  at  any  rat-e  would  not  undertake.  The  party  or- 
ganization accordingly  stepped  in  and  selected  the  candi- 
dates. But  the  election  of  the  party  candidates  involves 
more  hard  work  in  the  United  States  than  anywhere  else 
in  the  world,  and  the  average  citizen,  even  the  good  citizen, 
has  neither  the  time  nor  the  inclination  to  undertake  that 
work.  Yet  the  voting  lists  must  be  incessantly  looked 
after,  new  voters  enrolled,  meetings  arranged  for,  litera- 
ture circulated,  conferences  held,  and  a  mass  of  indescrib- 
able details  attended  to,  which,  unimportant  as  they  look, 
may  yet  mark  the  difference  between  success  and  failure 
at  the  polls.  That  the  party  organization,  which  has  made 
the  nominations  of  candidates,  should  also  step  in  and  con- 
duct the  elections  was  under  these  circumstances  inevit- 
able. 

This  method  of  nomination  and  election  could  scarcely 
fail  to  obscure  in  the  minds  of  the  candidates  their  proper 
relations  to  the  public.  It  was  not  unnatural  that  they 
should  regard  themselves  as  representatives  not  so  much 
of  the  people  as  of  the  party,  and  not  so  much  of  the  party 
as  of  its  organization,  and  not  so  much  of  the  organization 
as  of  its  directing  heads. 

What  was  the  result  of  this  method  of  making  nomina- 
tions and  winning  elections  on  the  directing  heads  of  the 
party  organization  themselves?  It  induced  and  enabled 
them  to  usurp  the  powers  of  the  organization  and  set  up  a 
machine.  They  disposed  of  legislators  with  their  votes 
and  governors  with  their  vetoes  and  administrative  dis- 

25 


cretion.  They  controlled  legislation;  they  determined 
executive  policies.  I  have  seen,  and  you  have  seen,  an  in- 
visible empire  enthroned  behind  the  constitutional  govern- 
ment of  a  State,  putting  it  through  its  customary  motions, 
but  so  perverting  and  abusing  all  its  processes  and  objects 
that  there  existed  in  fact  a  government  whose  real  object 
was  to  protect  the  improper  interests  of  individuals.  In- 
stead of  government  by  the  duly  elected  representatives  of 
the  people,  we  have  seen  in  one  State  after  another  govern- 
ment through  self-constituted  agencies  which  superseded 
those  representatives.  Instead  of  free  discussion  and  pub- 
lic action,  we  have  seen  private  agreements  and  secret  con- 
ferences. Instead  of  the  public  good  and  equal  justice  to 
all,  we  have  seen  favors  and  privileges  granted  to  those 
who  supplied  the  boss  with  money  for  his  campaign  and 
other  expenses. 

REMEDIES  OF  DESPERATION. 

Do  you  wonder  that  the  people  all  over  the  country  have 
been  stirred  to  the  deepest  indignation  at  this  prostitution 
of  their  government?  Is  it  surprising  that  they  have  risen 
in  their  wrath  and  solemnly  vowed  that  this  monstrous 
and  shameless  abuse  of  free  government  in  America  must 
be  ended  once  for  all?  Can  any  man  of  generous  spirit 
refuse  to  join  this  great  army  of  reform  and  fight  in  so 
noble  a  cause?  Who  that  reflects  can  for  a  moment  doubt 
that  the  recovery  and  the  exercise  of  political  power  by 
the  people  themselves  is  essential  to  the  very  life  and 
vitality  of  our  States  and  Nation? 

I  have  already  said  that  in  consequence  of  the  long 
and  demoralizing  exercise  of  power  by  bosses  and  ma- 
chines the  people  have  reached  a  point  where  they  almost 
despair  of  securing  able  and  honest  men  for  the  service  of 
their  States.  And  this  pessimism  has,  it  seems  to  me,  in- 
spired, or  at  any  rate  colored,  most  of  the  schemes  of  reform 
which  have  hitherto  been  brought  for^^ard  in  the  interest 
of  government  by  the  people  themselves.  Thus  it  is  be- 
cause they  feel  that  their  legislative  representatives  can- 
not be  trusted  that  the  people  in  some  States  are  taking  to 
themselves  the  direct  power  of  law-making  through  the 
instrumentality  of  the  Referendum  and  the  Initiative.  It 
is  because  they   feel  that  they  cannot  secure  able  and 

26 


honest  administrative  officials  that  they  liang  over  their 
heads  the  Damocles  sword  of  Recall.  The  same  suspicion 
of  corruption  has  still  more  obviously  animated  recourse 
to  legislation  for  the  regulation  and  supervision  of  politi- 
cal parties,  which,  in  all  other  countries  are,  so  far  as  I 
know,  left  free  to  manage  their  own  affairs.  Dreading 
the  influence  of  the  machine  and  distrusting  their  own 
power  to  eject  the  bosses  and  make  a  party  organization 
genuinely  representative  of  the  party  and  its  principles, 
the  voters  have  resorted  to  legal  regulation  to  limit  the 
powers  of  the  machine,  while  at  the  same  time  they  have 
divested  it  of  the  function  of  making  nominations  which 
they  themselves  undertake  to  perform  directly  through  the 
instrumentality  of  statutory  primaries,  which  substantially 
duplicate  all  elections. 

What  shall  we  say  of  these  measures  of  reform?  Do 
they  put  the  people  in  possession  of  their  own  govern- 
ment? What  is  their  effect  on  our  representative  institu- 
tions? Are  they  likely  to  give  us  better  men  in  public 
office? 

APPEALS  TO  FEAE. 

The  one  great  argument  which  we  hear  in  favor  of 
measures  tending  to  supersede  representative  government 
by  direct  popular  government  is  that  the  people  are  as 
likely  to  be  wise  and  judicious  as  their  representatives  and 
ageats  and  more  likely  to  be  honest  and  independent.  And 
I  think  it  must  be  recognized  that  so  long  as  the  people  are 
served  by  men  whom  they  cannot  trust,  so  long  will  the 
Recall  be  a  good  whip  to  hold  over  public  officials  and  the 
Initiative  and  Referendum  a  good  spur  and  curb  for  legis- 
lators. These  institutions  all  appeal  to  the  official's  sense 
of  fear.  I  am  far,  indeed,  from  underestimating  the  im- 
portance of  such  a  motive.  But  no  one  will  claim  it  is  the 
highest  or  even  the  most  effective  of  the  springs  of  human 
conduct.  And  in  the  work  of  government,  as  in  every 
other  work  of  life,  we  get  the  best  results  only  when  the 
highest  and  most  efficient  motives  and  powers  are  brought 
into  play. 

In  their  effect  on  the  public  official  the  Initiative, 
Referendum  and  Recall  must  be  described  as  negative  and 
deterrent  forces.  He  shall  not  do  this,  tliat,  or  the  other 
thing  under  penalty  of  having  his  head  cut  off.    No  doubt 

27 


this  is  the  beginning  of  good  administration,  but  it  is  only 
the  beginning.  It  does  not  carry  us  much  beyond  the 
alphabet  and  the  primer.  For  it  is  not  enough  to  repress 
the  evil  dispositions  of  public  officials  by  appeals  to  their 
fears.  We  must  also  stimulate  them  to  the  exercise  of 
their  highest  and  best  powers  in  the  service  of  the  public. 
If  they  are  to  do  much  for  us  we  must  expect  much  from 
them  and  make  it  possible  for  them  to  do  it.  All  these 
remedial  measures  are  pitched  on  a  low  plane  of  expecta- 
tion. They  are  really  devised  for  the  uses  of  a  community 
whose  officials  as  a  rule  are  not  fit  to  hold  office. 

PUT  THE  BEST  MEN  IN  OFFICE. 

What  democracy  needs  above  any  other  form  of  govern- 
ment— for  it  is  the  most  difficult  and  delicate  of  all 
forms  of  government — is  to  get  and  hold  the  best  men  in 
office.  My  own  belief  is  that  there  are  enough  of  men  of 
character  and  capacity,  especially  young  men,  ready  to 
serve  the  public  if  they  only  had  the  chance.  And  now 
that  the  people  are  so  generally  taking  nominations  into 
their  own  hands,  I  expect  to  see  these  superior  citizens 
put  forward  for  office.  On  that  hope  more  than  on  any 
other  reform  whatever  I  base  my  confidence  in  the  future 
of  our  Government — State  and  National.  Constitutions  are 
but  engrossed  parchment,  laws  are  but  printed  paper:  it  is 
not  these,  it  is  men  of  flesh  and  blood,  of  heart  and  soul,  of 
intellect  and  character,  men  of  patriotism  and  civic  devo- 
tion in  the  offices  of  legislation  and  administration  and 
especially  in  the  Chief  Magistracy  that  are  to  make  your 
governments  what  you  would  have  them  be. 

Men,  I  say,  of  higher  ability  and  character  than  the 
average  of  those  who  have  served  the  public  in  the  days 
of  machine  domination  are  coming  forward  for  political 
service  in  the  near  future.  Now^  so  far  especially  as  our 
States  are  concerned  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  keep 
the  way  open  for  them  and  to  do  everything  in  our  power 
to  encourage  them.  Most  particularly  must  the  highest 
offices  be  kept  and  made  attractive.  I  do  not,  of  course, 
mean  that  they  shall  be  made  attractive  by  the  pecuniary 
compensation  which  we  attach  to  them,  but  by  the  oppor- 
tunities we  offer  for  high,  generous  and  unfettered  public 
service. 

28 


AND  THE  NEED  OF  THE  RECALL  DISAPPEARS. 

Such  men  as  I  have  in  mind  will  be  rather  above  than 
below  the  average  of  the  community.  Some  of  them  are 
likely  to  be  leaders.  None  of  them  will  fear  responsibility 
in  the  performance  of  their  public  duties.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  prospect  of  Recall  at  the  bidding  of  some  dis- 
gruntled faction  or  clique  could  not  but  repress  their 
ardor  in  the  public  service,  weaken  their  initiative  in  new 
and  difficult  undertakings,  and  inevitably  impair  that 
Independence  which  is  at  once  the  crown  of  manhood  and 
the  supreme  condition  of  constructive  statesmanship. 
Consequently,  whatever  arguments  may  be  adduced  for  the 
use  of  the  Recall  in  communities  with  notoriously  incapable 
and  untrustworthy  officials,  whom  a  tyrannical  machine 
imposes  upon  the  public,  I  should  deprecate  the  adoption 
of  the  institution  by  the  State  of  New  York  without  more 
evidence  than  w^e  have  to-day  that  it  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary for  our  political  salvation.  And  I  venture  to  assert 
that  if  the  energy  now  spent  on  behalf  of  this  measure 
were  directed  towards  securing  good  men  for  public  office^, 
even  the  advocates  of  Recall  would  recognize  that  it  had 
become  unnecessary. 

THE  INITIATIVE  AND  REFERENDUM. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  Initiative  and  Referen- 
dum in  general  terms  in  connection  with  the  Recall.  The 
advocates  of  these  measures  claim  that  they  are  needed 
because  legislatures  defy  or  ignore  public  opinion.  That, 
however,  is  a  contention  to  be  examined.  Here  in  New 
York  State,  at  any  rate,  it  seems  to  me  the  people  can 
always  secure — certainly  in  the  long  run — such  legislation 
as  they  want  and  balk  such  legislation  as  they  do  not 
want.  This  result  is  produced  by  the  operation  of  public 
opinion,  which  no  legislator  has  the  temerity  to  defy.  If 
in  other  States  the  people  consider  the  Initiative  and  Ref- 
erendum useful  means  of  government  we  must,  of  course, 
recognize  their  right  to  manage  their  own  affairs.  But  of 
course  they,  too,  must  acknowledge  that  the  effects  pro- 
duced by  the  adoption  and  use  of  the  Initiative  and  Refer- 
endum are  beyond  the  control  of  the  advocates  who  are 
responsible  for  the  introduction  of  these  measures. 
"Things  are  what  they  are,"  Bishop  Berkeley  used  to  say, 

29 


"and  the  consequences  will  be  what  they  will  be;  why  then 
should  we  wish  to  deceive  ourselves?" 

Now  I  believe  it  is  an  indisputable  proposition  that  the 
use  of  the  Initiative  and  Referendum  is  gradually  under- 
mining our  representative  institutions  and  lowering  the 
dignity  and  importance  of  our  State  legislatures.  For  my 
own  part  I  agree  with  the  founders  of  the  Republic  in  the 
rejection  of  the  ancient  system  of  direct  democracy.  I 
believe  that  the  efficiency  and  perpetuity  of  our  Republic 
depend  on  the  maintenance  of  its  representative  character. 
Now  the  three  great  organs  of  a  representative  government 
are  the  Executive  Magistracy,  the  Legislature  and  the 
Courts.  Unless  the  sovereign  people  leave  these  organs  to 
be  exercised  by  the  agents  whom  the  people  freely  select, 
they  cannot  have  representative  government.  They  will 
have  a  government  partly  representative  and  partly  direct. 
But  the  predominant  partner  in  this  extraordinary  com- 
bination is,  of  course,  the  temporary  majority  of  the  peo- 
ple. How  can  the  agent  have  any  independent  footing  in 
the  presence  of  such  a  partner?  Consequently  in  such  a 
case  your  representative  government  is  already  in  process 
of  transformation  into  direct  government;  and  your  agent 
in  the  Magistracy,  Legislature,  or  Judiciary  is  already 
shorn  of  his  independence. 

UNDERMINING  STATE  LEGISLATURES. 

The  Initiative  and  Referendum  are  institutions  which, 
whatever  the  pleas  or  the  intentions  or  the  beliefs  or  hopes 
of  their  advocates,  do  actually  tend  to  supersede  the  State 
legislatures.  I  would  improve  our  legislatures  by  making 
seats  in  them  more  attractive  to  capable,  honest,  and 
patriotic  men.  I  would  take  political  power  from  the 
party  organization  and  restore  it  to  the  people's  elected 
representatives  in  the  State  government.  I  would  en- 
courage these  representatives  of  the  people  to  take  a  share 
in  the  leadership  of  their  parties  and  bear  their  full  respon- 
sibilitity  for  the  legislation  they  enacted  and  the  admin- 
istration they  maintained.  And  just  at  this  time  when  the 
machine  is  everywhere  smitten  with  impotency,  there  is  an 
opportunity  for  this  new  political  life  to  germinate.  What 
is  needed  above  all  else  is  the  entrance  of  independent, 
ocapable  and  trustworthy  men  into  the  public  service.    And 

30 


no  department  of  the  State  governmeut  contains  greater 
possibilities  of  healthful  development  and  reform  than  the 
legislature.  Will  you  seize  this  moment  to  lessen  its  attract- 
iveness, to  lower  its  dignity,  to  diminish  its  importance, 
to  weaken  its  independence,  and  even  to  supersede  its 
activities  by  reverting  to  that  reactionary  system  of  direct 
popular  legislation  which  ruined  the  republics  of  antiquity 
and  which  (except  for  petty  cantons)  the  world  has  since 
left  in  the  scrap-heap  of  discredited  and  discarded 
experiments? 

CAPABLE  AND  HONEST  LEGISLATORS  THE  SOL^ 

REMEDY. 

I  suspect  that  the  introduction  of  the  Initiative  and 
Referendum  into  the  States  which  have  adopted  them  was 
facilitated  by  that  pessimistic  spirit  in  regard  to  securing 
good  State  oflicials  for  which  the  machine  with  all  its 
other  sins  must  bear  the  responsibility.  But  with  party 
nominations  so  largely  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  the  ma- 
chine and  vested  directly  in  the  people  themselves  we  may 
surely  expect  representative  assemblies  of  a  higher  char- 
acter— assemblies  certainly  above  the  intiuences  which 
great  financial  interests  have  in  the  past  too  often  exerted. 
And  just  in  proportion  as  this  reasonable  hope  and  expec- 
tation of  reform  in  the  character  of  our  State  Legislatures 
is  realized  does  the  assumption  of  the  necessity  or  expedi- 
ency of  the  Initiative  and  Referendum  fall  to  the  ground. 

There  is  another  very  important  consideration  in  con- 
nection with  this  subject  which  I  desire  to  press  upon 
your  serious  attention.  One  advantage  of  our  federal  sys- 
tem with  its  half-hundred  sovereign  self-governing  States 
is  that  political  experiments  can  be  tried  on  a  local  scale 
by  communities  which  believe  in  the  policies  experimented 
upon  without  permission  of  the  rest  of  the  Union  and  with- 
out involving  it  in  any  way  in  the  results.  Unfortunately, 
in  recent  years  there  has  been,  in  consequence  perhaps  of 
the  prevailing  political  unrest  and  discontent,  a  somewhat 
impulsive  disposition  to  assume  that  radical  changes 
heralded  as  great  reforms  by  their  enthusiastic  promoters 
in  certain  Western  States,  perhaps  sparsely  populated, 
almost  certainly  with  peculiar  economic  or  political  con- 
si 


ditions,  must  be  panaceas  for  other  or  all  States,  though 
some  of  these  may  have  ten  times  the  population  and  in 
many  of  them  the  economic  and  political  conditions  are 
entirely  different. 

NEW  YORK  VS.  OREGON. 

I  wish,  therefore,  emphatically  to  proclaim  that  the 
State  of  New  York  is  under  no  kind  of  obligation — either 
in  the  forum  of  reason  or  good  statesmanship — to  adopt 
the  Initiative  and  Referendum  because  Oregon  or  Kansas 
has  adopted  them  and  because  the  original  advocates  of 
the  measures  in  those  States  are  satisfied  with  the  results. 

By  the  way,  did  you  know  that  in  Oregon  those  original 
advocates  were  largely  single-taxers,  that  their  first  enthu- 
siasm for  direct  legislation  sprang  from  the  belief  that  it 
could  be  used  to  introduce  the  single-tax  programme,  and 
that  they  have  since  made  Oregon  the  critical  battle-field 
of  the  single-tax  propaganda  in  America?  If  they  are 
satisfied  with  the  Initiative  and  Referendum,  the  people 
of  Oregon  in  general  may  have  other  sentiments.  Cer- 
tainly the  eingle-taxers  have  plagued  them  with  single-tax 
Initiative  proposals  ever  since,  and  the  overwhelming  de- 
feat which  these  policies  received  last  November  at  the 
polls  may  be  due  to  the  voters'  determination  to  get  a  rest 
from  the  troubles  and  annoyances  which  these  manipula- 
tors of  direct  legislation  annually  impose  upon  the  people 
of  the  State. 

But  even  if  Oregonians  were  more  generally  and 
heartily  in  favor  of  the  Initiative  and  Referendum  than 
visitors  to  that  State  actually  find  them,  it  would  by  no 
means  follow  that  the  people  of  the  Empire  State  should 
follow  their  lead.  Why  should  this  vast,  populous,  and 
infinitely  complex  and  diversified  State  of  New  York  rush 
into  all  the  political  uncertainties,  hazards,  and  evils  of 
direct  legislation?  Already  we  control  our  legislation 
through  the  force  of  public  opinion.  Why  should  we 
change  the  system?  Certainly  before  embarking  on  the 
perilous  sea  of  direct  legislation  we  had  better  wait  for  the 
result  of  the  experiment  in  other  States  and  for  a  period 
a  good  deal  longer  than  the  few  years  since  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  Initiative  and  Referendum  into  Oregon. 

32 


HOW  DIRECT  LEGISLATION  WORKS  IN  OREGON. 

Meanwhile  Oregon  experience  is  enough  to  give  us 
pause.  Look  at  some  of  the  results  in  the  election  of  last 
November.  No  fewer  than  thirty-seven  legislative  pro- 
posals of  State-wide  scope  were  put  before  the  citizens  of 
the  State !  Of  these  seven  referred  to  taxation  and  finance, 
seven  to  highways,  three  to  the  State  university,  three  to 
penology,  one  to  the  date  of  the  taking  effect  of  the  law 
passed  by  the  legislature  to  regulate  the  State  printing,  and 
one  for  the  establishment  of  the  office  of  hotel  inspector  of 
the  State,  while  two  were  designed  to  modify  the  system  of 
direct  legislation  and  another  (as  though  it  were  a  small 
matter)  to  reorganize  the  executive  and  legislative  depart- 
ments of  the  Government! 

In  this  huge  mass  and  undigested  medley  of  measures 
I  had  almost  forgotten  to  mention  another  which  received 
16,910  votes.  This  was  a  proposed  law  requiring  that  the 
sheets  on  hotel  beds  should  be  at  least  103  inches  long  and 
81  inches  wide !  You  may  smile  at  this  triviality !  But  I 
recall  Darwin's  remark  that  in  science  "it  is  the  triflling 
facts  which  are  significant."  Now  have  not  the  people  the 
right  to  rule — to  manage  their  own  affairs?  And  will  not 
the  10,000,000  people  of  the  State  of  New  York  be  ten 
times  as  competent  as  a  million  people  in  Oregon  to  regu- 
late the  minimum  dimensions  of  hotel  sheets?  Nothing  in 
the  Oregon  programme  of  direct  legislation  at  the  last 
election  seems  to  me  more  significant  or  instructive  than 
this  Initiative  measure  fixing  the  minimum  number  of 
inches  for  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  sheets  in  the 
hotels  of  the  State. 

Of  course,  when  the  people  do  their  legislative  work 
so  exhaustively  it  takes  a  good  deal  of  space  even  to  de- 
scribe it  by  titles.  In  1910  a  Portland  policeman,  as  he 
came  from  the  polls  said:  "It's  like  voting  a  bed-quilt." 
But  last  November  the  Oregon  ballot  was  still  larger;  it 
was  a  yard  in  length  by  half  a  yard  in  breadth ;  or,  to  be 
exact,  (and  using  the  standard  of  the  hotel  bed-sheets)  it 
was  34 1/2  inches  long  and  I814  inches  wide. 

On  this  ballot  were  the  thirty-seven  measures  submitted 
to  the  people  of  the  State.  But  this  was  only  the  begin- 
ning. Some  of  these  measures  were  highly  complex  and 
technical.     Accordingly  a  campaign  book  with  the  argu- 

33 


ments  pro  and  contra  was  indispensable  for  the  mental 
illumination  of  the  electors  of  the  State.  And  in  this 
campaign  book  thirteen  of  the  thirty-seven  measures  were 
both  advocated  and  opposed.  Twelve  more  of  the  measures 
were  recommended  by  arguments  without  objections  on 
the  other  side.  The  remaining  twelve  measures  were 
unargued. 

What  did  the  people  of  Oregon  do  with  this  mass  of 
proposed  legislation?  In  the  first  place,  only  eleven  of 
the  thirty-seven  measures  received  votes  enough  for  enact- 
ment into  law.  And,  secondly,  of  this  entire  list  of  eleven 
measures  which  secured  the  voters'  approval,  all  but  two 
were  so  brief  that  they  did  not  require  more  than  a  min- 
ute's time  for  reading  and  intelligent  comprehension,  and 
as  a  matter  of  fact  seven  of  them  were  unargued  in  the 
campaign  book. 

LESSONS  FROM  OREGON'S  EXPERIENCE. 

Let  me  leave  with  you  a  few  lessons  from  the  Oregon 
election  of  last  November.  The  first  is  that  the  voters  have 
grown  wary  of  involved  and  radical  schemes  commending 
themselves  under  the  name  of  reform,  and  refuse  to  enact 
into  law  any  measures  except  those  making  clear  and 
simple  changes  in  existing  statutes.  Secondly,  for  more 
complex  and  constructive  legislation  the  voters  are  com- 
ing to  recognize  that  any  measures  proposed  should  be  sub- 
mitted to  discussion,  criticism,  and  amendment  before 
enactment  into  law,  and  that  tlie  Initiative  does  not  afford 
opportunity  for  these  indisj)ensable  functions;  and  I  be- 
lieve that  as  time  goes  on  they  will  be  brought  as  a  result 
of  their  own  experience  to  the  conclusion  of  world-history 
to  the  effect  that  for  the  work  of  legislation  a  genuine 
representative  legislature  is  the  best  institution  known  to 
man.  Thirdly,  the  experience  of  Oregon  contradicts  the 
statements  and  arguments  of  the  advocates  of  direct  legis- 
lation in  one  point,  which,  however,  is  fundamental.  They 
have  always  said  that  the  use  of  the  Initiative  and  Refer- 
endum was  for  emergencies  and  would  not  be  resorted  to  on 
ordinary  occasions ;  nay,  that  if  the  people  possessed  these 
weapons  they  would  not  want  to  use  them.  Now  over 
against  this  asseveration  and  prediction  is  the  fact  that  in 
Oregon,  thanks  to  the  pernicious  activity  of  scheming  busy- 

34 


bodies  and  agitatiuj^-  cliques,  the  number  of  measures  sub- 
mitted at  a  given  election  for  direct  legislation  by  the  peo- 
ple has  in  a  few  years  risen  from  two  to  thirty-seven ;  and 
of  these  most  have  to  do  with  ordinary  matters  and  some 
of  them  with  matters  as  trivial  as  the  size  of  hotel  bed- 
sheets,  or  a  change  in  the  legislative  enactment  regarding 
the  date  for  the  going  into  effect  of  a  new  State  printing 
act,  or  the  establishment  of  a  new  office  of  State  hotel  in- 
spector. Fourthly,  must  it  not  also  be  borne  in  upon  the 
mind  of  the  Oregonians  that  the  Initiative  on  the  one  hand 
puts  the  voters  of  the  State  at  the  mercy  of  all  kinds  of 
schemers  and  manipulators,  while  on  the  other  hand  it  ma- 
terially reduces,  if  it  does  not  altogether  destroy,  the  op- 
portunities for  genuine  leadership? 

NOMINATING  CONVENTIONS  AND  PRIMARIES. 

I  now  pass  from  the  subject  of  direct  legislation  to  the 
subject  of  direct  primaries.  If  the  making  of  laws,  other 
than  that  organic  law  which  we  call  the  Constitution,  is 
clearly  the  function  of  the  people's  representatives  and  not 
of  the  people  themselves,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  function 
of  nominating  candidates  for  public  office? 

In  the  past  nominations  were  always  made  by  the 
representatives  of  the  party  assembled  in  convention.  In- 
deed, the  function  of  nominating  the  party  candidates  has 
been  by  far  the  most  important  function  of  the  party 
organization.  And  not  only  that.  But  when  the  party 
organization  was  usurped  by  the  machine,  the  control  of 
nominations  is  what  gave  the  boss  nine-tenths  of  his  power. 
If,  therefore,  the  people  are  to  dethrone  the  boss  and  re- 
sume the  powers  which  he  has  usurped,  and  which  he  ille- 
gitimately wields,  they  must  divest  him  of  the  function  of 
naming  the  party  candidates  for  office.  And  this  again 
they  can  do  either  by  themselves  naming  directly  the  can- 
didates for  their  respective  parties  or,  if  that  is  not  feasible 
or  expedient,  by  selecting  genuine  representatives  who  will 
come  together  in  a  party  convention,  and,  taking  account 
of  political  sentiment  and  conditions  and  candidates  in 
the  different  sections  of  the  district  or  State,  nominate 
such  candidates  as  will  be  most  likely  to  meet  the  approval 
of  their  constituents  and  stand  the  best  chances  of  suc- 
cess in  the  subsequent  election  by  the  people. 

35 


Of  course  I  am  speaking  of  honest  and  genuine  party 
conventions  and  direct  primaries.  We  all  know  that  con- 
ventions have  been  held  which  merely  reflected  the  will 
and  purpose  of  a  single  man — the  party  boss.  And  we  all 
know,  also,  that  the  party  boss  has  learned  to  manipulate 
the  direct  primary,  and  that  the  brand  now  legalized  in  the 
State  of  New  York  lends  itself  admirably  to  such  manipu- 
lations. But  I  cannot  discuss  these  institutions  at  all,  if 
at  every  step  I  must  take  account  of  the  perversions  and 
abuses  of  them.  I  must  perforce  consider  them  with  ref- 
erence to  their  primary  intent  and  ideal  constitution.  So 
regarded,  the  direct  primary  puts  nothing  between  the 
voter  and  his  choice  of  candidate;  it  is  a  frictionless  organ 
for  the  expression  of  his  free  choice. 


ADVANTAGE  OF  PRIMARIES,  AND  LIMITATIONS. 

The  direct  primary,  I  say,  mirrors  the  mental  prefer- 
ence of  the  individual  voter — of  thousands  or  millions  of 
individual  voters.  It  offers,  however,  no  opportunity  for 
consultation,  debate,  or  conference  beyond  neighborhood 
or  locality  limits.  Accordingly,  it  is  peculiarly  adapted  to 
the  function  of  making  party  nominations  for  local  officers 
and  for  State  assemblymen  and  senators  and  for  represen- 
tatives in  Congress.  Whether  it  can  be  successfully  used  in 
making  nominations  for  State  offices  in  large  and  populous 
States  cannot  yet  be  asserted  in  view  of  the  comparatively 
short  experience  we  have  had  of  the  system.  If  it  could  be 
successfully  used  for  this  purpose  I  should  favor  it  on  the 
general  principle  that  in  a  democracy  it  is  better  for  the 
people  themselves  to  perform  directly  and  personally  all 
political  functions  which  it  is  not  absolutely  necessary  for 
them  to  delegate  to  representatives.  But,  with  my  present 
knowledge,  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  in  New  York  State, 
with  its  vast  area,  its  nine  or  ten  million  inhabitants,  its 
highly  diversified  industrial  and  economic  conditions,  both 
rural  and  urban,  nothing  short  of  a  party  convention,  with 
unrestricted  opportunity  for  conference  and  discussion, 
can  adequately  reflect  the  composite  sentiments  of  the 
entire  party  on  the  subject  of  the  best  and  strongest  candi- 
dates for  nomination  as  standard-bearers  of  the  party  in 
the  State. 

36 


THE  REPUBLICAN  POLICY  IN  REGARD  TO 

PRIMARIES. 

In  the  Saratoga  Convention  of  1910,  I  advocated  both 
in  committee  and  on  the  floor  of  the  Convention,  a  genuine 
system  of  direct  primaries  for  the  nomination  of  all  party 
candidates  except  the  Governor  and  his  associates  on  the 
State  ticket.  My  resolution  was  voted  down  by  a  com- 
bination of  impassioned  opponents  of  any  primaries  and 
impassioned  advocates  of  universal  primaries.  But  that 
resolution  probably  represented  then,  and  it  certainly 
represents  to-day,  the  views  of  the  great  majority  of  the 
Republican  party — and,  I  believe,  of  the  people  of  the 
State.  I  rejoice,  therefore,  that  two  years  later,  in  the 
State  Convention  of  1912,  the  party  accepted  this  pro- 
gramme.   Listen  to  the  admirable  declaration  it  made: 

"We  favor  the  short  ballot,  surrounding  the  primary 
elections  with  the  same  safeguards  as  regular  elections, 
the  direct  election  of  party  committees,  the  direct  nomina- 
tion of  party  candidates  in  congressional,  senatorial 
assembly,  county  and  municipal  sub-divisions,  and  the 
right  of  party  electors  to  directly  express  their  preference 
for  nominations  for  State  offices  if  they  so  desire." 

To  carry  out  this  policy  the  Republican  minority  last 
winter  introduced  bills  into  the  legislature.  They  were, 
however,  defeated  by  the  Democratic  majority.  Some 
months  afterwards  the  Governor  caused,  on  April  12th,  a 
direct  primary  bill  to  be  introduced,  practically  identical 
with  the  Republican  measures  except  that  it  abolished  the 
State  Convention.  In  their  devotion  to  primary  reform  the 
Republicans  declared  their  readiness  to  vote  for  the  Gov- 
ernor's bill  if  it  was  amended  to  preserve  the  State  Con- 
vention. The  Governor  refused,  and  his  bill  was  beaten 
in  both  houses.  It  was  again  beaten  in  the  extraordinary 
session  of  the  legislature.  In  this  extraordinary  session, 
the  Republican  minority  once  more  attempted  to  have  their 
primary  reform  measure  enacted  into  law,  but  their  pur- 
pose was  again  thwarted  by  the  Democratic  majority. 

A  GREAT  REFORM  MEASURE. 

I  appeal  to  all  advocates  of  direct  primaries  to  support 
this  great  reform.  Does  the  extremist  object  that  it  does 
not  provide  for  universal  primaries?    I  answer  that  it  goes 

37 


quite  as  far  in  that  direction  as  the  mind  of  the  Republi- 
can party.  Nay,  it  goes  quite  as  far  in  that  direction  as 
the  disinterested  and  intelligent  opinion  of  the  citizens 
of  the  State.  What  has  the  extremist  accomplished  in  the 
past  which  would  compare  with  such  a  substantial  result 
as  this  measure  offers  him?  What  other  prospect  has  he 
in  the  future  of  getting  his  program  so  fully  carried  out? 
At  present  we  offer  him  genuine  unadulterated  direct  pri- 
maries for  all  municipal  and  county  officers,  for  State 
assemblymen  and  senators,  and  for  representatives  in  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States  as  well  as  for  delegates  to 
the  State  conventions  of  his  party,  with  the  right  of  party 
voters  directly  to  express  their  preference  as  regards  those 
candidates  whom  the  State  Convention  is  to  nominate. 
Here,  I  say,  is  a  door  which  I  should  think  every  direct 
primary  man,  every  sensible  reformer,  would  be  glad  to 
enter. 

But  this  reform  is  larger,  more  vital,  more  significant 
than  I  have  yet  indicated.  It  may  be  that  after  experience 
with  the  system  of  direct  primaries  which  I  have  been 
describing,  the  people  of  the  State  will  desire  to  extend  it 
to  the  Governorship  and  other  State  offices.  Now  have 
you  reflected  how  simple  and  easy  a  matter  it  would  be  to 
make  that  final  application  of  the  system?  Why,  the  voters 
have  only  to  nominate  assemblymen  and  senators  pledged 
to  it  to  have  it  enacted  into  law.  For  assemblymen  and 
senators  make  the  laws,  and  our  system  of  direct  prima- 
ries puts  the  nomination  of  senators  and  assemblymen  in 
the  hands  of  the  voters  themselves.  And  that  system  we 
are  solemnly  pledged  to  carry  out  as  soon  as  the  party 
comes  again  into  office  in  this  State.  And  in  my  opinion 
that  will  be  in  the  very  near  future. 

AN  EVOLUTIONARY  PROGRESSIVE  PLATFORM. 

I  have  been  discussing  under  different  aspects  what  I 
regard  as  the  one  fundamental  problem  of  the  politics  of 
our  day.  That  problem  is  the  adjustment  of  our  govern- 
ment on  the  one  hand  to  the  more  complex  physical,  eco- 
nomic, and  social  environment  and  on  the  other  hand  to 
the  more  developed  intelligence,  conscience,  and  civic  sense 
of  the  American  people  in  this  twentieth  century.  And  I 
have  shown  that  at  many  points  there  is  a  clamant  neces- 

38 


sity  for  modifying  both  the  organs  and  the  functions  of  our 
governments  and  of  our  political  parties.  But  I  have  not 
proposed  any  violent  break  with  the  past  or  any  radical 
measure  of  change.  My  policy  is  the  scientific  ideal  of 
gradual  and  persistent  improvements  which  without  en- 
dangering the  vitality  of  the  political  organism  will  pro- 
duce in  it  a  marked  reformation  and  culminate  in  its  com- 
plete adaptation  both  to  the  conditions  of  the  modern 
economic  world  and  the  spirit  and  aspirations  of  twentieth 
century  Americans.  The  work  to  be  done  in  American 
politics  to-day  is,  I  have  said,  a  work  for  Moderate,  Con- 
stitutional, or  Evolutionary  Progressives.  Even  where  the 
existing  mal-adjustment  of  government  to  economic  con- 
ditions and  intellectual  and  moral  requirements  is  at  its 
worst,  I  have  found  no  occasion  for  the  radical  changes 
proposed  by  Kevolutionary  or  Catastrophic  Progressives. 
And  I  find  less  reason  for  them  than  anywhere  else  in  the 
domain  of  our  judiciar}^,  to  which  I  now  invite  your 
attention. 

OUR  JUDICIAL  SYSTEM. 

Civilization  is  the  substitution  of  law  for  impulse  and 
passion.  And  law,  enacted  by  legislatures,  is  interpreted 
and  applied  by  the  courts.  The  decision  of  the  courts  is 
not  the  will  of  the  judges,  but  the  will  of  the  people  as 
enacted  in  the  constitution  or  laws  which  the  judges  eluci- 
date and  interpret.  The  ancient  Romans  with  fine  insight 
called  their  chief  judicial  ofiflcer — the  praetor — "the  living 
voice  of  the  civil  law."  Our  highest  court  in  the  same  way 
is  the  living  voice  of  the  Constitution.  And  as  the  Con- 
stitution is  the  deliberate  enactment  of  the  people,  this 
living  voice  gives  utterance  to  the  legal  conscience  of  the 
people.  It  declares  the  people's  solemn  and  deliberate 
guarantee  of  the  inviolable  rights  of  individuals  and 
minorities.  The  sophist  may  preach  that  justice  is  the 
power  of  the  stronger  and  the  demagogue  may  rant  that 
justice  is  the  vote  of  the  majority;  but  the  Court — that 
voice  of  the  Constitution,  that  legal  conscience  of  the  peo- 
ple— in  the  cool,  dry  atmosphere  of  judicial  determination, 
with  the  everlasting  stars  of  justice  shining  above  it,  i)ro- 
tects  the  weakest  against  the  strongest  and  upholds  the 
rights  of  even  a  feeble  minority  against  the  assaults  of  the 
most  vehement,  impatient  and  tyrannical  majority. 

39 


No  wonder  that  James  Bryce,  in  speaking  of  the  federal 
courts,  testifies  that  there  is  "no  part  of  the  American 
system  which  reflects  more  credit  on  its  authors,  or  has 
worked  better  in  practice."  No  wonder  that  for  four  gen- 
erations Americans  themselves  have  gloried  in  their 
courts  as  the  impregnable  bulwarks  of  their  rights  and 
liberties. 

ATTACKS  ON  THE  COURTS. 

It  is  difficult  to  explain  the  change  which  has  suddenly 
come  over  the  public  mind  in  regard  to  our  judicial  system. 
In  part,  no  doubt,  it  is  due  to  political  agitation,  though 
the  suddenness  and  extent  of  the  change  suggest  also  the 
operation  of  other  causes.  But  whatever  the  explanation 
of  the  phenomenon,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  fact. 
Our  courts  are  now  subjected  day  after  day  to  fierce  and 
bitter  attacks.  It  is  roundly  declared  that  our  State  judges 
are  hopelessly  enmeshed  in  technicalities,  that  our  State 
judicial  procedure  is  a  hindrance  to  justice  and  a  comfort 
to  criminals,  and  that  our  State  courts  have  lost  touch 
with  life  and  have  grown  petrified  in  pettifogging  abstrac- 
tions. 

NEEDED  REFORM  IN  PROCEDURE,  &c. 

It  may  well  be  that  certain  evils  have  grown  up  in  con- 
nection with  the  practice  of  our  courts  which  need  to  be 
corrected.  And  I  rejoice  that  the  bar  and  the  intelligent 
public  have  already  set  themselves  to  improve  our  civil 
and  especially  our  criminal  procedure,  to  end  the  law's  de- 
lay, to  reduce  the  expenses  of  litigation,  and  to  mitigate 
the  other  evils  of  which  the  public  not  unreasonably  com- 
plains. I  expect  that  with  the  accomplishment  of  these 
and  other  reforms,  our  courts  will  fully  regain  the  popular 
respect  and  confidence  which  in  some  degree  has  recently 
been  withdrawn  from  them.  Certain  I  am  that  the  courts 
need  to  possess  and  enjoy  that  popular  esteem  and  support 
for  the  successful  discharge  of  their  functions  in  the  com- 
monwealth. And  the  sooner  we  can  reform  what  needs 
reform  in  our  judicial  system — of  course,  without  endan- 
gering the  institution  or  radically  changing  its  traditional 
operations — the  better  will  it  be  not  only  for  the  courts, 
but  also  for  the  commonwealth.    Let  it  also  be  remembered 

40 


that,  if  our  judicial  system  needs  any  amendment,  it  is 
the  duty  of  the  citizens  of  the  State  and  not  of  the  judges 
of  the  courts  to  make  it.  If  there  are  evils  in  our  State 
judicial  system  it  is  because  we — the  citizens — have  failed 
to  do  our  duty.  The  judges  have  done  the  best  they  knew 
how  with  the  judicial  establishment  we  put  into  their 
hands.  Perhaps  the  main  trouble  is  that  we  interfere  too 
much  with  their  freedom.  Perhaps  they  should  have  the 
same  discretion  and  latitude  as  English  judges  enjoy.  It 
is  quite  possible  that  our  statutory  codes  of  procedure 
might,  with  great  advantage,  be  superseded  by  short  and 
simple  Practice  Acts. 


THE  RECALL  OF  JUDGES. 

Instead  of  correcting  the  specific  evils  which  may  have 
developed  in  connection  with  our  courts  by  salutary  meas- 
ures of  reform — the  one  to  end  this  evil  and  the  other  to 
end  that — the  Catastrophic  Progressives  have  brought 
forth  a  panacea  which  they  claim  will  correct  all  evils  at 
once.  Of  course  it  is  a  revolutionary  measure.  It  is 
natural  for  this  school  of  reformers  to  insist  on  advanc- 
ing through  catastrophes  and  cataclysms.  Are  there  any 
evils  in  the  judicial  department  of  the  Government?  Well, 
they  have  an  infallible  cure!  That  cure  is — the  Recall  of 
judges. 

I  have  already  sjwken  of  the  Recall  in  connection  with 
the  executive  and  legislative  departments  of  the  Govern- 
ment and  I  have  given  reasons  for  rejecting  it  in  the  State 
of  New  York.  The  force  of  that  reasoning  is  augmented 
ten-fold  or  a  hundred-fold  when  we  come  to  consider  the 
judiciary.  For  independence  is  the  breath  of  life  to  the 
good  judge.  The  framers  of  the  Federal  Constitution  un- 
derstood this  perfectly.  They  did  not  permit  the  President 
to  remove  the  judges  nor  Congress  to  diminish  their  sal- 
aries. Are  we  so  much  wiser  than  the  Fathers  of  the  Re- 
public that  we  can  afford  to  reverse  their  principles  and 
maxims  of  government?  They  gave  us  a  government  of 
law  administered  by  independent  courts.  Shall  we  turn 
it  into  a  government  of  demagogues  and  agitators  who 
override  the  courts  by  the  vote  of  a  temporary  majority  of 
partisans? 

41 


THE  RUIN   OF  COURTS   OF  JUSTICE. 

Can  any  reasonable  man  doubt  the  effect  of  this  policy 
to  remove  judges  without  cause  shown  or  hearing  had?  It 
puts  the  judge  at  the  mercy  of  every  defeated  and  disap- 
pointed litigant.  It  puts  the  judge  at  the  mercy  of  every 
opposing  political  party  or  faction.  It  discourages  honest 
and  fearless  interpretation  of  the  law  and  puts  a  premium 
on  the  insinuating  arts  of  popularity  and  the  gift  of 
triumphant  stump  oratory.  It  discourages  able  and  honest 
lawyers  from  becoming  judges.  It  deprives  the  public  of 
judicial  work  of  the  best  quality,  which  is  a  prime  requisite 
in  a  democracy  builded  on  the  principle  of  justice.  It 
robs  the  weak  and  helpless  of  that  protection  of  their 
rights  which  an  able  and  fearless  judge  never  hesitates  to 
assert  against  the  richest  individual  or  the  strongest  politi- 
cal party.  It  compels  the  judge  to  regard  not  only  the 
law  but  the  constant  dangers  of  attack  on  himself  if  his 
interpretation  is  unsatisfactory  to  a  group  of  partisans 
or  to  an  excited  temporary  majority.  But  justice  should 
hold  the  scales  evenly,  and  be  blind  to  every  consideration 
but  the  law.  From  the  heights  of  this  ideal  the  operation 
of  the  Recall  must  inevitably  drag  down  our  courts.  For 
psychological  laws  are  as  inexorable  as  physical  laws. 
Power  cows  its  helpless  victim.  Nothing  but  superhuman 
virtue  can  save  men  from  cowering  in  the  presence  of  ruth- 
less power.  And  nothing  but  the  superhuman  virtue  of 
an  occasional  extraordinary  judge  can  save  a  court,  under 
the  operation  of  the  Recall,  from  degenerating  into  a  cow- 
ardly, accommodating  and  spineless  body  of  time-servers. 

RECALL  OF  JUDICIAL  DECISIONS. 

But  vicious  as  the  Recall  of  Judges  is  in  principle,  and 
baleful  as  it  is  in  its  effect  upon  the  independence  of  the 
judges  and  the  authority  and  integrity  of  the  courts,  every 
citizen  is  to-day  exposed  to  a  vastly  greater  danger,  involv- 
ing principles  still  more  vicious  and  entailing  consequences 
not  only  demoralizing  to  the  courts  but  subversive  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  fundamental  institutions  of  free  gov- 
erment.  I  allude  to  the  proposed  Recall  of  Judicial  De- 
cisions by  popular  vote. 

The  complete  independence  of  the  courts,  once  they 
have  been  established  by  the  supreme  power  of  the  State, 

42 


whether  that  power  be  an  absolute  monarch  or  the  sover- 
eign people,  is  essential  to  the  proper  discharge  of  their 
judicial  function;  though,  of  course,  a  modification  of  the 
judicial  organization,  or  of  its  function,  may  at  any  time 
be  prescribed,  either  by  the  monarch  through  a  decree,  or 
by  the  people  through  an  amendment  of  the  Constitution. 
But  the  courts  thus  organized  by  the  sovereign  power  of 
the  State,  must,  from  the  very  nature  of  the  functions 
assigned  to  them,  be  left  in  absolute  independence,  both  by 
that  sovereign  power  and  by  the  other  departments  of  the 
Government.  This  necessity  flows  from  the  very  nature  of 
justice  which  the  courts  are  established  to  administer,  and 
it  is  rooted,  also,  in  the  constitution  of  man. 

Man  is  a  self-controlling  dynamo.  What  in  human 
nature  is  dynamic,  energetic,  impulsive — what  in  human 
nature  is  will  and  desire — expresses  itself  in  the  State,  and 
acts  in  the  State,  through  the  executive  and  legislative 
departments  of  the  Government.  Through  these  the  people, 
under  certain  coiistitutional  regulations,  do  what  they 
please.  But  self-control,  that  other,  that  divine  element  in 
human  nature,  is  in  the  State  expressed  and  represented 
by  the  courts.  It  is  the  business  of  the  courts  to  main- 
tain the  restraints  which  we  have  imposed  upon  ourselves 
in  the  Constitution.  When  a  community  loyally  accepts 
and  stands  by  the  restraints  which,  through  the  Constitu- 
tion, it  has  imposed  upon  itself,  you  see  at  its  highest 
pitch  of  excellence  both  human  nature  and  democratic 
government. 

But  impatience  of  constitutional  restraints  is  a  char- 
acteristic not  merely  of  all  demagogical  agitators,  but  of 
many  sincere  though  impatient  reformers.  And,  in  a  re- 
cent decision  of  the  highest  court  of  our  State,  they  have 
found  the  latest  occasion  for  resenting  and  denouncing 
that  control  which  the  fundamental  principles  of  the  Con- 
stitution impose  upon  us. 

WORKMEN'S  COMPENSATION  LAW. 

In  the  case  of  Ives  vs.  the  South  Buffalo  Railway  Com- 
pany, the  New  York  Court  of  Appeals  held  unconstitu- 
tional a  compulsory  Workmen's  Compensation  Act.  The 
Act  provided  that,  in  case  of  injury  to  an  employee  in  cer- 
tain   dangerous    occupations,    the    employer    should    pay 

43 


damages,  even  though  the  accident  were  not  due  to  negli- 
gence or  any  other  fault  on  his  part.  The  court  held  that 
this  law  was  not  within  the  police  power  of  the  State,  but 
violated  the  constitutional  prohibition  against  taking  prop- 
erty without  due  process  of  law. 

Now  the  general  public  are  entirely  in  accord  with  the 
workers  for  social  reform,  and  the  advocates  of  fresh  appli- 
cations of  the  principle  of  justice  to  modern  industrial  con- 
ditions, on  the  proposition  that  we  must  have  in  this  great 
State  of  New  York  a  Workmen's  Compensation  Act  to 
supersede  the  present  unsatisfactory  and  antiquated  sys- 
tem of  accident  litigation.  In  this  respect  our  laws  are 
behind  both  the  practice  of  other  states  and  countries  and 
the  humanitarian  and  ethical  spirit  of  the  age.  There  is 
absolutely  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  citizens  of  New 
York,  irrespective  of  party,  desire  to  wipe  out  this 
reproach.  There  is  no  doubt  that  in  the  near  future  this 
desire  will  be  realized.  We,  too,  recognize,  as  well  as  our 
fellow-citizens  in  other  States,  that  justice  demands  that 
in  case  of  injury  to  a  workman  in  hazardous  occupations, 
the  community  which  enjoys  the  product  should  indemnify 
the  unfortunate  workman  for  the  injury  he  has  sustained 
in  the  process  of  making  that  product. 

LIBERAL  ATTITUDE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 
SUPREME  COURT. 

The  only  difference  of  opinion  that  can  possibly  arise 
is  as  to  the  best  method  of  securing  that  social  and  indus- 
trial legislation  on  the  desirability  of  which  the  general 
public  is  already  agreed. 

There  is  one  simple  solution  of  the  difficulty  which  is 
always  passed  over  in  silence  by  the  Catastrophic  Pro- 
gressives who  would  revolutionize  our  courts.  They  de- 
nounce the  courts  in  certain  States,  and  notably  in  the 
State  of  New  York,  as  hostile  to  industrial  and  social 
legislation.  On  the  other  hand,  the  attitude  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  towards  this  subject  is 
declared  to  be  progressive,  sympathetic,  and  entirely  satis- 
factory to  the  advocates  of  social  reform.  Indeed,  Mr.  Ran- 
som, in  his  authoritative  work  in  support  of  the  Recall  of 
Judicial  Decisions,  declares  that  this  measure  is  only  an 
effort  "to  bring  laggard  State  courts  of  ultimate  appeal  up 

44 


to  the  progressive  standards  set  by  the  Nation's  great 
Court."  And  he  adds  that  "if  you  do  not  agree  with  those 
standards  your  quarrel  is  with  Chief  Justice  White  and 
his  colleagues,"  and  not  with  the  advocates  of  the  Judicial 
Recall. 

STRICTER  ATTITUDE  OF  STATE  COURTS. 

Now  there  is  an  easy  way  of  bringing  these  so-called 
"laggard  State  courts"  up  to  the  standard  set  by  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  Nation.  That  way  is  by  an  amendment 
of  the  Federal  Judiciary  Act,  providing  that  when  a  State 
court  decides  that  a  State  law  is  not  a  valid  exercise  of  the 
police  power,  but  a  violation  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment 
of  the  Federal  Constitution,  an  appeal  may  be  taken  to 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 

State  courts,  or  some  State  courts,  are  to-day  stricter  in 
their  attitude  towards  State  laws  on  social  and  industrial 
subjects  attacked  on  federal  grounds  than  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States.  But  in  1789,  when  the  Federal 
Judiciary  Act  was  adopted,  the  attitude  of  the  state  courts 
toward  State  laws  attacked  as  violating  Federal  rights  was 
just  the  reverse.  At  that  time  of  fervent  devotion  to  State 
rights  there  was  a  general  presumption  that  the  State 
courts  would  sustain  such  state  laws.  On  that  account  the 
Federal  Judiciary  Act  made  provision  for  appeals  to  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  only  in  cases  in  which 
State  laws  attacked  on  Federal  grounds  were  declared  by 
the  State  courts  to  be  valid;  and  as  this  legislation  is  still 
in  force  there  is  to-day  no  appeal  to  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  in  case  where  a  State  court  decides 
against  the  validity  of  a  State  law  on  the  ground  of  repug- 
nancy to  the  Constitution,  laws  or  treaties  of  the  United 
States. 

PROVIDE  APPEAL  FROM  STATE  COURTS  TO 
FEDERAL  SUPREME  COURT. 

Here,  then,  is  a  simple  method  of  bringing  the  so-called 
"laggard  State  courts"  up  to  the  level  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  in  their  attitude  towards  social  and 
industrial  legislation.  Nothing  is  needed  but  an  amend- 
ment of  Section  237  of  the  Federal  Judicial  Code,  provid- 
ing that  an  appeal  may  be  taken  to  the  Supreme  Court, 

45 


where  the  highest  State  court  holds  a  State  law  invalid  on 
the  ground  that  it  violates  the  Due  Process  of  Law  provi- 
sions of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  of  the  Federal  Con- 
stitution. 

This  is  a  natural  and  normal  development  of  our  consti- 
tutional law.  If  adopted  it  would  speedily  put  an  end  to 
that  "outworn  social  philosophy"  of  the  judges  of  the  State 
courts  which  has  been  so  eloquently  denounced  by  the  ad- 
vocates of  Judicial  Eecall.  But,  of  course,  there  is  nothing 
spectacular  or  sensational  in  this  legal  reform.  A  sensible 
and  rational  measure,  it  does  not  lend  itself  to  purposes 
of  agitation.  But  it  would  enable  us  to  get  the  social  and 
industrial  legislation  demanded  by  the  common-sense  and 
conscience  of  the  people  of  the  State  of  New  York,  and  it 
would  enable  us  to  get  it  without  revolutionary  change  in 
our  judicial  system. 

IF    NECESSAKY    AMEND    STATE    CONSTITUTION. 

The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  it  has  been 
stated,  has  been  more  liberal  than  the  courts  of  our  own 
State  in  dealing  with  new  social  and  industrial  legislation. 
What  shall  we  do  if  appeal  to  the  Supreme  Court  is  not 
opened  up  to  us  in  this  class  of  legislation,  when  our  State 
courts  hold  a  State  law  to  be  invalid  because  violative  of 
the  Fourteenth  Amendment?  The  radical  reformers  tell 
us  we  can  do  nothing  better  than  accept  Judicial  Eecall. 

But  why  should  court  decisions  be  submitted  to  popular 
vote?  It  is  alleged  that  the  courts  do  not  respond  to  popu- 
lar sentiment,  and  the  judges  are  behind  the  times  in  their 
social  philosophy.  AYell,  the  courts  are  not  established 
to  respond  to  passing  sentiment,  but  to  declare  the  eter- 
nal principles  of  justice;  and  if  the  judges  have  old- 
fashioned  philosophies,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  neither 
the  Decalogue  nor  the  Golden  Rule  is  of  yesterday,  and 
that  a  doctrine  is  not  necessarily  true  because  it  is  new, 
nor  a  theory  of  society  absurd  because  it  is  old.  If,  how- 
ever, decisions  of  the  courts  on  social  and  industrial  ques- 
tions— decisions  based  on  the  State  constitution — are  out 
of  harmony  with  the  most  enlightened  moral  ideas  of  the 
age,  is  it  not  clear  that  what  is  needed  is  an  adaptation 
of  the  Constitution  to  the  ethical  conceptions  and  dictates 
of  twentieth  century  Americans?    Tlie  old  way  of  reform 

46 


in  sucli  cases  is  to  amend  the  Constitution.  This  has 
worked  admirably  for  four  generations.  Why  should  we 
suddenly  resolve  to  abandon  it  now? 

Is  it  objected  this  will  all  take  time?  Certainly  it  will. 
All  reforms  take  time.  You  cannot  have  the  millennium 
while  you  wait.  But  it  will  not  take  undue  or  unreasonable 
time,  and  when  the  constitutional  amendment  is  adopted 
the  legislature  will  have  power  to  act  not  only  on  one  bill, 
but  on  all  bills  of  a  similar  character. 

JUDICIAL  RECALL  SUBVERSIVE  OP  OUR  CONSTI- 
TUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 

I  do  not  dwell  either  upon  the  enormous  demands 
which  the  Recall  of  Decisions  would  make  upon  the  voters 
of  the  State,  or  the  confusion  it  would  introduce  into  our 
jurisprudence.  But  I  must  point  out  that  if  the  Recall  of 
Decisions  is  once  authorized  in  reference  to  one  subject — 
say,  the  police  power  of  tlie  State,  as  has  been  proposed — ■ 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  will  be  extended  gradually  to 
other  subjects,  and  possibly  to  all.  Already  supporters 
of  the  policy  are  advocating  its  application  not  only  to 
State  courts,  but  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  and  that  not  only  in  matters  involving  the  exercise 
of  the  police  power,  but  also  to  decisions  involving  those 
great  constitutional  guarantees,  which  are  the  protection 
alike  of  individuals  and  minorities.  You  see,  therefore, 
that  by  the  Recall  of  Judicial  Decisions,  in  the  heat  of  po- 
litical or  partisan  passion,  under  the  leadership  of  some 
magnetic  agitator,  the  very  foundations  of  our  Republican 
government  might  be  completely  swept  away. 

A  GOVERNMENT  OF   SPECIAL   INSTANCES. 

In  Great  Britain  Parliament  is  omnipotent.  The  plen- 
titude  of  the  people's  power  dwells  in  it.  There  is  nothing 
it  cannot  do,  even  to  the  abolition  of  the  House  of  Lords 
or  the  House  of  Commons  or  the  Parliament  itself.  There 
is  no  written  constitution  restraining  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  Americans  live  under  written  constitutions.  We 
believe  our  rights  and  liberties  better  protected  under  a 
written  constitution,  which  lays  down  fundamental  rules 
and  inviolable  guarantees. 


You  may  take  either  the  American  system  or  the  Eng- 
lish system.  You  may  have  either  a  written  constitution 
or  no  written  constitution.  But  you  make  a  travesty  of 
government  when  you  solemnly  adopt  a  constitution,  with 
its  fundamental  principles  and  guarantees,  and  then  set 
it  aside  in  any  particular  case  to  gratify  some  specific  de- 
sire or  accomplish  some  expedient  purpose.  It  was  not 
necessary  for  you  to  have  made  a  general  rule  of  conduct 
to  be  obligatory  upon  your  specific  acts.  But  having  made 
the  rule  it  is  monstrous  that  you  should  break  it.  If  you 
have  adopted  a  general  rule  of  action  applicable  to  all 
cases,  you  cannot  do  what  you  like  in  any  particular  case. 
A  government  under  a  written  constitution,  which  may  be 
set  aside  whenever  a  temporary  majority,  excited  by  some 
partisan  issue,  votes  to  make  an  exception,  as  it  is  the  most 
irrational,  is  likely  in  practice  to  prove  the  worst  and  the 
most  despotic  of  all  governments.  For  it  is  government 
by  arbitrary  discrimination.  Though  it  retains  the  form  of 
a  constitutional  limitation,  it  is,  as  Dean  Thayer,  of  the 
Harvard  Law  School,  has  pointed  out,  binding  only  to 
such  an  extent  and  in  favor  of  such  persons  as  the  major- 
ity of  voters  may  choose. 

Every  time  a  law  is  made  valid  by  a  majority  of  the 
electorate,  which  the  court  had  declared  invalid  because 
unconstitutional,  a  step  is  taken  in  the  direction  of  sub- 
verting the  entire  constitution.  The  time  might  come 
when,  in  contempt  of  the  constitution,  an  excited  political 
party  would  legally  forbid  the  freedom  of  speech  and  of 
writing  or  the  free  practice  of  religion,  or  deny  a  fair  trial 
to  an  unpopular  citizen  whom  the  majority  had  already  in 
their  own  minds  condemned.  The  citizen  would  have  no 
rights  which  a  legislature  backed  by  a  popular  majority 
would  be  bound  to  respect. 

INALIENABLE  RIGHTS. 

The  time  to  cry  halt  is  now — at  the  very  beginning. 
We  must  inflexibly  refuse  to  take  a  single  step  in  the  di- 
rection of  Judicial  Recall.  We  will  not  put  any  of  our 
constitutional  rights  in  peril.  "All  men,"  says  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  "are  endow^ed  by  their  Creator  with 
inalienable  rights.  Governments  are  instituted  to  secure 
those   rights."     Those  rights  existed  before   all   govern- 

48 


merits;  those  rights  will  outlive  all  governments.  They 
are  not  derived  from  a  majority  of  votes;  they  are  the 
free  gift  of  God.  Majorities  cannot  dispose  of  them;  they 
are  forever  inalienable.  It  is  those  rights  which  render 
inviolable  the  weakest  individual,  the  smallest  minority,  or 
the  most  despised  religious  denomination.  Of  those  rights 
the  Constitution  is  at  once  the  formal  expression  and  the 
inviolable  guarantee. 

THE  PROBLEM  OP  TO-DAY. 

I  have  been  outlining  a  program  of  reform,  but  a  re- 
form by  constitutional  and  evolutionary  methods.  I  am 
opposed  to  the  catastrophic  and  revolutionary  methods 
which  are  being  commended  to  the  public  not  only  by  po- 
litical agitators,  but  also  by  ardent  and  courageous,  though 
all  too  impatient,  reformers. 

I  am  confident,  however,  that  the  overw^helming  major- 
ity of  American  citizens  desire  to  walk  in  the  old  ways, 
though  they  also  desire  and  insist  that  the  old  ways  shall 
be  repaired  and  improved.  We  Americans  have  the  best 
Constitution  and  the  best  institutions  in  the  world.  The 
problem  before  us  is  to  make  the  actual  operation  of  gov- 
ernment, both  in  the  Nation  and  in  the  States,  as  good  as 
its  organic  law  and  framework. 

THE  REPUBLICAN  PARTY  GETTING  READY. 

No  political  party  can  give  an  honest,  efficient  and 
satisfactory  administration  of  public  affairs  save  under 
three  conditions.  In  the  first  place,  the  party  must  stand 
on  sound  principles.  Secondly,  in  applying  those  princi- 
ples the  party  must  be  governed  by  the  law  of  progress, 
with  its  corollary  of  adaptation  to  twentieth  century  con- 
ditions. And,  thirdly,  the  agents  and  representatives 
whom  the  party  selects  for  carrying  out  its  policies  must 
be  men  of  good  ability,  of  high  character,  of  unselfish  de- 
votion to  the  public  good,  and  of  tried  or  presumed  capac- 
ity for  public  service. 

For  two  generations,  barring  only  a  few  years,  the  Re- 
publican Party  has  administered  the  government  of  the 
United  States.  That  fact  alone  may,  I  think,  be  fairly  re- 
garded as  evidence  of  the  soundness  of  its  principles,  the 

49 


progressive  nature  of  its  policies,  and  the  general  intelli- 
gence, capacity  and  character  of  its  leaders  and  agents  in 
legislation  and  administration. 

Nor  should  any  one  be  surprised  that,  after  all  these 
years  of  Kepublican  administration,  the  people  decided  in 
1912  to  give  the  Democratic  Party  some  experience — even 
though  it  should  be  a  short  experience — in  the  business  of 
government !  A  term  in  opposition  at  Washington  cannot 
but  have  the  best  effects  on  the  Republican  Party,  They 
will  have  time  to  meditate  on  their  principles,  to  formu- 
late their  policies,  to  select  their  leaders,  to  compose  their 
differences  and  to  consecrate  themselves  anew  to  high  and 
unselfish  public  service.  In  so  far  as  banishment  from 
office  may  be  regarded  as  punishment  at  the  hands  of  the 
public,  it  may  be  reasonably  expected,  like  chastisement 
and  tribulation  in  general,  to  produce  in  the  party  the 
peaceable  fruits  of  righteousness.  And  in  1914  and  in  1916 
Republicans  will  be  once  more  ready  to  assume  the  respon- 
sibilities of  government. 


DEMOCRATIC  GOVERNMENT  IN  NEW  YORK 

STATE. 

In  the  State  of  New  York  the  Republican  Party  has 
been  in  opposition  for  the  last  three  years.  But  whatever 
the  advantages  to  the  party  itself  of  this  temporary  release 
from  the  responsibilities  of  office,  it  has  been  at  a  fearful 
cost  to  our  State.  Compare  with  the  pledges  and  prom- 
ises of  the  Democratic  Party  the  record  which  they  have 
actually  made.  The  New  York  Civil  Service  Reform  As- 
sociation has  declared  "the  Civil  Service  Law  in  the  State 
has  continued  to  be  an  administration  of  unredeemed 
pledges  and  violation  of  faith  with  the  people."  And  this 
criticism  only  particularizes  the  more  general  verdict  of 
the  people  on  the  results  of  three  years  of  Democratic  ad- 
ministration. Does  not  every  one  know  what  that  popular 
verdict  is?  Is  it  not  that  it  has  been  a  period  of  violated 
party  pledges,  of  colossal  public  extravagance,  of  incapa- 
ble and  perverted  government,  and,  worst  of  all,  of  crying 
dishonor  to  the  State  and  cruel  humiliation  to  all  its  citi- 
zens? The  touch  of  Tammany  has  blighted  our  entire 
State  government. 

50 


A  GOVERNMENT  BY  TAMMANY. 

That,  gentlemen,  is  the  secret  of  the  failure  of  the 
Democratic  Party  in  the  State  of  New  York.  It  is  a  Tam- 
manyized  Party.  The  ruler  of  Tammany  Hall  is  the  boss 
of  the  State  government.  The  Democratic  Party  cannot 
do  better  than  it  has  done,  because  it  is  under  Tammany 
inspiration,  management  and  control.  And  there  is  no  pos- 
sibility of  its  escape  from  Tammany  domination.  Hon- 
orable and  patriotic  Democrats  protest  against  this  mis- 
use and  abuse  by  Tammany  of  the  party  name  and  the 
party  organization,  but  their  protests  avail  nothing  to 
change  the  actual  situation.  The  Democratic  Party  in  the 
State  of  New  York  is  and  remains  a  Tammanyized  Party. 
The  inner  circle  have,  indeed,  quarreled  among  themselves, 
and  they  are  disclosing  facts — facts  as  amazing  as  they  are 
discreditable — which  it  would  otherwise  have  been  difficult 
for  the  public  to  ascertain.  But  in  spite  of  this  rupture 
and  these  revelations  Tammany  remains  entrenched  in  the 
State  government  and  dominant  in  the  Democratic  Party. 

THE  REPUBLICAN  PARTY  TO  REDEEM  THE 

STATE. 

The  first  duty  of  all  good  citizens  is  to  break  the  grip 
of  Tammanj'  on  the  State  government.  Now,  in  the  Re- 
publican Party,  and  in  the  Republican  Party  alone,  the 
people  of  the  State  of  New  York  have  an  agency  to  accom- 
plish that  task.  I  have  already  described  the  policies  now 
incumbent  on  the  party  and  the  fonvard  look  and  the 
progressive  spirit  in  which  they  are  to  be  carried  out  and 
the  sort  of  candidates  who  must  be  selected  for  that  pur- 
pose. The  Republican  Party  in  the  State  of  New  York  is 
going  to  regain  and  retain  public  confidence  by  its  plat- 
form, by  its  spirit,  and  by  its  standard-bearers.  Already 
many  of  those  who  left  us  in  1912  have  returned.  I  believe 
that,  with  few  exceptions,  all  of  them  will  soon  be  standing 
under  the  old  banner.  Progressive  Republicanism,  with 
its  constitutional  and  evolutionary  methods,  will  be  found 
to  provide  for  all  that  is  reasonably  essential  in  their 
creed.  And  as  these  old  members  of  the  family  return  to 
the  old  party  home  we  shall  give  them  a  cordial  welcome. 
At  the  same  time  we  invite  to  join  with  us  all  those  pa- 

51 


triotic  Democrats  who  are  disgusted  with  the  Tammany 
regime,  and  also  that  great  body  of  Independents,  who 
think  little  of  names  and  parties,  but  much  of  men  and 
principles.  All  these  must  recognize  that  only  through  the 
Republican  Party  is  there  political  salvation  for  our  State. 

How  best  to  accomplish  the  State's  redemption  is  the 
supreme  question  before  this  Convention.  There  is  no 
more  important  first  step  than  the  nomination  of  strong 
candidates  for  judges  to  fill  the  vacancies  in  the  Court  of 
Appeals,  which  is  the  primary  object  of  your  assembling. 

Gentlemen,  I  will  no  longer  detain  you  from  the  high 
duties  to  which  you  are  called.  Only,  as  a  life-long  Re- 
publican, I  desire  to  express  not  merely  my  hope,  but  my 
confident  expectation,  that  those  duties  will  be  performed 
in  a  way  conducive  to  the  highest  welfare  of  the  State,  and, 
therefore,  also,  conducive  to  the  best  interests  of  the  Re- 
publican Party. 


52 


Address  of  Hon.  Elihu   Root,    Permanent 

Chairman. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Convention  :  I  thank  you  with  all 
my  heart  for  the  kindly  act  and  the  cordial  expression 
which  have  made  me  Chairman  of  this  Convention,  and 
greeted  me  as  its  Chairman  in  my  old  home.     (Applause.) 

It  is  a  full  forty  years  that  I  have  been  trying  to  do 
my  part  as  a  Republican  in  every  place  from  folding  and 
bunching  and  distributing  tickets  up  step  by  step  in  every 
place  where  service,  could  be  rendered  to  the  party,  and  I 
hope  to  continue  the  effort  of  service  so  long  as  life  is 
spared  me.  (Cheers.)  Many  an  old  friend  of  earlier  days 
has  passed  away ;  nearly  all  the  men  who  Avere  fighting  the 
battles  of  the  Republican  party  in  those  da^'s  have  gone, 
but  the  Republican  party  with  its  principles  and  its  devo- 
tion to  the  cause  of  free  government  continues  and  will 
continue.  (Applause.)  You  cannot  change  its  character, 
for  its  character  was  formed  in  the  sternest  of  conflicts. 
You  cannot  change  its  name,  for  its  name  is  sanctified  by 
the  memory  of  great  and  good  men  who  have  given  their 
lives  to  their  countrv  and  bv  the  achievement  of  great 
things  for  the  country  and  for  humanity.  (Applause  and 
cheers. ) 

But  it  is  not  my  purpose  to  inflict  upon  you  a  speech. 
We  have  too  much  to  do  in  this  short  evening  to  occupy 
the  time  with  more  words  from  me.  I  am  readv  to  stand 
upon  that  admirable  exposition  of  sound  Republican  doc- 
trine which  we  heard  from  the  lips  of  President  Schur- 
man  this  morning.  (Applause.)  I  endorse  it  as  you  en- 
dorse it,  as  the  Republicans  of  the  State  will  endorse  it, 
and  as  the  majority  of  the  voters  will  endorse  it  in  Novem- 
ber. (Api)lause  and  cheers.)  I  wish,  however,  before  tak- 
ing my  seat  to  emphasize  tAvo  things.  One  is  the  vast  im- 
portance of  the  election.  The  election  of  judges  does  not 
ordinarily  excite  the  interest  that  is  felt  in  the  election  of 
executive  and  legislative  officers,  yet  at  this  time  under 
all  the  circumstances  of  the  shifting  opinions  and  the 
varied  current  of  popular  feeling;  at  this  time  when  all 

53 


settled  questions  are  being  unsettled  and  reconsidered;  at 
this  time  when  what  we  had  believed  to  be  the  very  foun- 
dations of  justice  are  being  shaken,  the  election  of  judges 
of  the  highest  court  of  the  greatest  State  of  the  Union  is 
of  greater  importance  than  the  election  of  any  Governor 
or  any  Legislature.  Governors  come  and  go.  If  they  are 
bad  they  are  not  re-elected.  Legislatures  come  and  go. 
If  they  fail  in  their  duty  others  take  their  place.  Under- 
lying our  whole  system  of  peace  and  order  and  security  and 
opportunity ;  underlying  the  safety  of  the  poor  man  in  his 
home  as  truly  as  the  security  of  the  rich  man's  property  is 
the  independence,  the  honor,  the  authority  of  the  judiciary 
of  our  State.  (Applause.)  The  Eepublican  party  has  al- 
ways sounded  the  clear  note  of  fidelity  and  devotion  to  the 
underlying  principle  of  government  by  law  and  not  govern- 
ment by  men,  government  by  principle  and  not  govern- 
ment by  impulse;  and  such  a  government  as  in  all  its  his- 
tory the  Eepublican  party  has  maintained  can  be  contin- 
ued only  by  preserving  the  independence  of  the  courts  and 
the  respect  of  our  people  for  the  administration  of  law 
through  the  courts.  ( Applause. ) 

The  other  thing  I  wish  to  emphasize  is  the  peculiar 
condition  of  the  politics  and  government  of  our  State  aris- 
ing from  the  enormous  growth  of  the  city  of  New  York.  The 
city  has  grown  so  great  that  the  organization  which  con- 
trols the  Democratic  party  in  the  city  needs  only  a  little 
added  support  to  control  the  Democratic  party  of  the  State. 
Tammany  Hall  has  obtained  that  additional  support;  she 
has  found  in  the  State  outside  of  New  York  assistance, helx)- 
ers,  adherents,  of  the  same  character  as  Tammany  Hall  it- 
self. Tammany  is  no  longer  a  local  issue;  she  has  grasped 
at  the  control  of  the  State;  she  controls  the  Democratic 
party  of  the  State;  she  controls  the  State  Committee  of 
the  Democratic  party ;  she  is  about  to  name  the  Democratic 
candidates  for  judicial  office,  and  she  reaches  out  her  hand 
to  control  that  great  court  upon  which  the  protection  of 
our  liberty  depends. 

It  has  been  my  fortune,  or  misfortune,  to  be  much  away 
from  our  State  of  recent  years;  and  I  cannot  express  to 
you  the  sense  of  shame  and  humiliation,  the  deep  indigna- 
tion and  resentment  that  I  have  felt  as  I  have  read  from 
day  to  day  in  the  newspapers  and  heard  from  day  to  day  by 
word  of  mouth  wliat  disgrace  has  been  inflicted  upon  our 

54 


beloved  State  by  having  the  character  of  Tammany  Hall 
impressed  upon  its  government.  It  is  to  Tammany  that  we 
are  to  look  for  the  cause  of  the  dreadful  condition  revealed 
in  the  police  trials  during  the  past  year.  It  is  to  Tammany 
that  we  are  to  look  for  the  cause  of  the  disgraceful  condi- 
tion at  Albany — a  condition  in  which  everything  appears  to 
have  been  forgotten  except  the  vulgar  squabbles  of  faction 
over  opportunities  for  graft  and  plunder,  I  would  not — I 
will  not — say  one  word  about  the  pending  impeachment, 
but  I  will  say  that  there  can  be  no  possible  outcome  of  the 
impeachment  trial,  acquittal  or  conviction ;  there  can  be  no 
possible  view  of  the  evidence  under  which  the  Democratic 
party  of  the  State  controlled  by  Tammany  Hall  and  im- 
pressed with  the  character  of  that  organization  is  not  con- 
victed. (Applause.)  I  do  not  care  so  much  for  the  fact  that 
they  have  squandered  millions  of  money  that  we  have  got  to 
paj'  out  of  taxation,  I  do  not  care  so  much  for  the  fact 
that  coming  into  power  with  promises  of  retrenchment  and 
economy  they  have  increased  the  salary  roll  $1,900,000  a 
year,  but  I  do  care  that  we  have  all  been  disgraced;  that 
the  people  of  New  York  are  lowered  in  the  estimation  of  the 
world,  and  that  the  enemies  of  popular  free  government 
by  the  people  have  a  new  argument,  and  the  friends  of 
popular  free  government  by  the  people  have  a  new  explana- 
tion and  apology  to  make. 

At  the  most  vital  point  of  our  government,  in  the  elec- 
tion of  Judges  who  are  to  stand  against  all  corrupt  and 
overbearing  officials — in  our  highest  court  at  that  vital 
point — there  is  now  presented  to  the  people  of  New  York 
not  only  in  tlie  city  but  throughout  the  country  an  oppor- 
tunity by  their  votes  to  say  whether  they  will  increase 
the  power  and  approve  the  stewardship  of  Tammanyized 
democracy  in  our  State  or  whether  they  will  rebuke  and 
reject  it.  (Applause.) 

So  I  say  that  this  Convention  has  a  more  important 
function  to  perform  than  any  ordinary  convention  which 
is  called  upon  to  nominate  candidates  for  governor,  for 
state  officers,  or  for  all  the  rest  of  the  government  com- 
bined. 


55 


Address  of  Hon.  Harold  J.  Hinman. 

On  the  iDresentation  of  the  report  of  the  Committee 
on  Eesolutions,  Harold  J.  Hinman,  Kepublican  minority 
leader  of  the  Assembly,  spoke  as  follows : 

The  Eepublican  party  in  its  whole  history  as  a  govern- 
ing agent  has  never  had  a  greater  obligation  resting  uiDon 
it  nor  a  larger  opportunity  to  demonstrate  that  it  is  a 
party  fit  to  govern  than  at  the  present  time.  Great  issues 
dealing  with  the  very  fundamentals  of  our  government 
must  be  settled,  testing  whether  we  shall  abide  by  the  guar- 
antee of  our  Federal  Constitution  that  every  State  in  the 
Union  shall  retain  a  Republican,  a  representative  form  of 
government  or  shall  resort  to  the  forms  of  pure  democ- 
racy ;  whether  our  tariff  policy  of  over  half  a  century  shall 
be  reversed;  whether  our  methods  of  taxation,  of  banking 
and  of  the  handling  of  our  currency  shall  be  overturned; 
whether  the  constitutional  rights  of  the  individual  to  life, 
to  liberty  and  to  private  property  shall  be  rendered  a  farce 
piece-meal  by  the  recall  of  judicial  decisions,  or  by  other- 
wise freeing  any  classes  of  our  citizens  from  the  just  and 
equal  operation  of  the  law  because  of  their  wealth,  influ- 
ence or  the  number  of  their  votes ;  whether  all  of  our  grave 
political  issues  shall  be  determined  soberly,  sanely  and 
wisely  upon  the  basis  of  underlying  principle,  or  whether 
we  shall  resort  to  panaceas  and  temporary  expedients  and 
drift  into  the  purely  personal  politics  of  Mexico. 

The  party  which  appeals  to  the  ripe  and  sober  judg- 
ment of  the  people  upon  all  of  these  issues,  and  thus  be- 
comes the  conservative  party,  will  adopt  the  policy  of  per- 
manence and  wisdom.  The  party  which  appeals  to  class 
prejudice  and  self-interest  or  relies  upon  governmental 
adventure  instead  of  tried  and  sound  principles,  and  thus 
becomes  the  radical  party,  may  win  the  temporary  victory 
of  the  accomplished  and  attractive  exhorter,  but  cannot 
succeed  ultimately  in  providing  the  cure  for  which  we  are 
seeking.  The  sole  result  must  inevitably  be  the  upheaval 
attendant  upon  disorderly  and  revolutionary  government. 

What  is  it  that  is  in  the  minds  of  the  people  of  the 

56 


United  States  that  needs  to  be  satisfied?    Witli  the  major- 
ity of  them  I  believe  it  is  an  earnest  and  growing  desire  to 
hasten  our  progress  toward  better,  cleaner  and  more  whole- 
some  conditions,    socially,   economically   and    politically. 
They  are  not  being  led  fast  enough,  and  their  confidence  in 
our  present  order  of  things  has  been  so  severely  shaken 
by  the  discovery  of  gross  malfeasance  and  misfeasance  in 
office  that  even  the  fundamentals  of  our  theory  of  govern- 
ment are  challenged  and  threatened  in  order  to  satisfy 
their  restlessness.    In  such  a  crisis  the  need  is  not  for  new 
governmental  machinery,  but  the  hope  of  the  future  lies  in 
the  moral  strength  of  the  community.    Give  us  leaders  and 
not  schemers;  men  of  character  in  public  life,  not  adven- 
turers and  self-seekers,  men  to  whom  an  aroused  public 
may  look  with  confidence  as  their  prophets  and  guides 
rather  than  as  their  hirelings.    When  we  shall  have  digni- 
fied public  office  by  the  election  of  such  men  to  represent 
us,  we  shall  have  demonstrated  a  higli  sense  of  public  mor- 
ality, tested  anew  the  inestimable  value  of  representative 
government  and  offered  the  highest  inducements  to  public- 
spirited  men  to  enter  the  public  service.    There  is  no  short 
cut  to  the  millennium.    There  is  no  system  of  government 
which  can  protect  the  people  from  tlieir  own  indifference. 
When  the  public  demand  a  higher  type  of  public  officials, 
that  demand  will  be  felt.    Parties  will  respond  to  it.    Tlie 
right  kind  of  men  will  be  attracted  to  political  life.    Con- 
fidence will  be  restored  and  respect  for  government  will 
prevail. 

It  is  time  for  us  to  speak  together  as  citizens  and  not 
as  mere  partisans  about  things  as  they  are.  The  party 
which  can  be  honest  with  itself  and  fair  to  its  opponents 
will  be  received  as  honest  by  the  great  majority  of  the 
people.  If  we  are  honest  with  ourselves  we  must  admit 
that  a  majority  of  our  citizens  are  by  no  means  satisfied 
with  things  as  they  are,  but  desire  to  see  things  improved. 
It  was  this  desire  for  better,  cleaner  and  more  wholesome 
conditions,  faster  than  the  Republican  party  seemed  able 
or  willing  to  progress,  which  contributed  largely  to  the 
vote  against  us  in  the  last  campaign.  A  failure  to  appre- 
ciate and  recognize  this  as  true  is  not  being  honest  with 
ourselves.  The  new  Eepublicanism  must  be  borne  by  the 
recognition  of  this  fact  as  a  prime  requisite  and  must  be 
followed  by  more  idealism,  greater  civic  courage,  more  dis- 

57 


interested  handling  of  public  problems  for  the  good  of 
the  whole  people.  The  party  which  can  demonstrate  hon- 
esty of  thought,  purpose  and  endeavor,  which  so  acts  that 
its  policies  when  inaugurated  will  be  felt  to  be  honestly 
intended  for  the  good  of  the  whole  people,  is  the  kind  of 
party  needed  to-day,  A  party  can  do  more  for  itself  in 
that  way  than  by  any  artificial  attempts  at  self-perpetua- 
tion or  the  inauguration  of  policies  with  an  eye  to  the 
number  of  votes  that  may  be  cast  at  the  coming  election. 
Even  temporary  defeat  with  the  flag  of  honor  flying  at  the 
mast  is  better  than  a  victory  of  expediency  and  insincerity. 

Let  us  then  be  honest  with  ourselves,  recognize  our 
shortcomings  of  the  past  and  highly  resolve  to  nominate 
and  appoint  to  public  office  only  men  of  integrity  and  abil- 
ity to  promote  higher  endeavor,  to  help  dethrone  dishon- 
esty and  corruption  in  government,  to  discountenance  and 
punish  it  in  our  own  midst  as  zealously  as  we  would  in 
others,  to  be  consistent  in  promise  and  fulfilment,  to  be 
fair  in  our  criticism  of  others,  to  generously  recognize  their 
honest,  forward  administration  of  affairs — in  short,  to  seek 
first  for  what  is  right  and  honorable  and  only  second  for 
what  is  expedient. 

Why,  in  the  name  of  truth  and  justice,  should  we  not 
commend  President  Wilson  for  the  consistency  with  which 
he  is  insisting  that  his  party  shall  carry  out  the  tariff 
policy  which  it  has  so  long  professed,  but  never  compelled 
its  representatives  to  practice?  It  is  sufficient  for  us  to 
criticise  the  policy  itself  and  let  the  result  determine  the 
wisdom  of  the  Democratic  measure.  Why  should  we  not 
commend  the  straightforward  and  orderly  way  in  which 
President  Wilson  has  thus  far  proceeded  to  negotiate  the 
business  of  his  office?  To  do  so  is  but  fair  and  puts  a 
premium  on  orderly  and  honest,  forward  administration. 
It  encourages  men  of  character  and  ability  to  enter  pub- 
lic life.  It  encourages  weaker  public  officials  to  emulate 
the  example  and  tends  to  raise  the  whole  moral  tone  of 
government. 

If  the  Democratic  party  in  this  State  had  been  domi- 
nated by  such  a  strong  and  wholesome  force  there  might 
not  have  been  much  to  criticise,  but  the  fact  is  that  the  con- 
duct of  affairs  here  has  been  so  disorderly  that  the  de- 
moralization of  our  State  government  is  appalling.  The 
State  has  never  been  so  humiliated  in  all  its  history.    Its 

58 


climax  is  reached  to-day  when  we  witness  an  impeachment 
trial,  not  brought  in  good  faith  for  any  patriotic  purpose 
but  as  a  convenient  weapon  of  revenge.    It  is  a  great  temp- 
tation for  either  party  to  wash  the  dirty  linen  of  the  other 
party,  but  we  seldom  find  such  an  enterprise  started  by  a 
party  member  against  his  own  party.    To  the  credit  of  Gov- 
ernor Sulzer,  be  it  said  in  all  fairness,  he  removed  a  higli- 
way  commissioner  who  was  indirectly,  if  not  directly,  re- 
sponsible for  grossly  corrupt  administration  of  highway 
affairs,  that  he  strengthened  the  department  by  the  ap- 
pointment of  Mr.  Carlisle,  and  that,  whatever  his  motive 
may  have  been,  he  insisted  upon  the  enforcement  of  the 
criminal  law  against  those  who  had  profited  by  the  high- 
way scandals,  which  have  been  a  tremendous  detriment  to 
our  good  roads  movement,  and  which  were  the  real  disgrace 
of  the  last  administration.     To  his  credit  be  it  said  that, 
whatever  his  motive,  these  activities  of  Governor  Sulzer 
were  against  the  forces  of  evil,  the  most  corrupt  power  in 
the  country,  Tammany  Hall ;  and  it  was  these  activities  in 
which  he  persisted  against  threats  and  entreaties  which 
lead  directly  to  his  impeachment. 

Most  of  those  of  us  who  opposed  the  impeachment  took 
the  position  that  it  was  our  duty  to  protect  the  dignity  of 
the  high  office  of  Governor,  and  thus  of  the  State.  We 
pleaded  for  ample  opportunity  to  read  and  reflect  upon  the 
evidence.  We  asked  that  the  Frawley  Committee  report 
be  referred  to  the  Judiciary  Committee,  with  instructions 
to  that  committee  to  examine  the  law  and  the  precedents 
and  to  hold  such  further  hearings  as  the  solemnity  of  the 
function  demanded.  We  moved  to  postpone  consideration 
of  the  impeachment  resolution  for  one  week.  But  all  of 
our  motions  were  savagely  attacked  and  defeated.  The 
Frawley  Committee  report  was  approved  actually  without 
giving  the  members  a  moment's  opportunity  to  read  either 
the  report  or  the  evidence  upon  which  it  was  based. 

To  impeach  the  Governor  without  notice,  without  de- 
liberation, without  giving  ample  opportunity  to  every  mem- 
ber to  become  convinced  in  his  own  mind  of  the  truth  of 
the  charges,  was  a  monstrous  perversion  of  the  process  of 
impeachment.  The  public  sense  of  fairness  has  revolted 
against  the  despicable  conduct  of  that  night's  proceedings. 
In  truth,  the  people  so  despise  Tammany  and  are  so  keenly 
outraged  by  its  base  motive  to  impeach  the  Governor  for 

59 


his  virtues  instead  of  his  sins  that  the  indications  point  to 
their  possible  approval  of  a  verdict  by  the  Court  of  Im- 
peachment of  innocent  though  proven  guilty.  But  even  if 
so  extraordinary  a  result  should  be  attained,  it  is  my  firm 
conviction  that  the  people  are  also  bound  to  judge  Mr.  Sul- 
zer  as  a  man  upon  the  truth  or  falsity  of  his  oath  as  to 
campaign  receipts  and  expenditures  and  upon  the  truth  or 
falsity  of  the  claim  that  he  converted  campaign  subscrip- 
tions to  private  use.  The  truth  which  will  be  borne  in  the 
public  mind  by  the  revelation  of  such  a  distressing  fact 
must  inevitably  lead  to  taking  suitable  measures  to  guard 
against  the  repetition  of  such  evil  practices  and  to  elect 
men  to  offlce  who  are  above  suspicion  and  beyond  reproach. 

It  is  well  that  we  should  consider  this  at  this  time  not 
only  because  of  the  pending  impeachment  trial,  but  because 
that  trial,  together  with  the  Cohalan  and  Stillwell  trials, 
are  bound  to  rise  uppermost  in  the  public  mind  in  the  con- 
sideration of  the  doctrine  of  the  Recall  as  a  substitute  for 
the  present  method  of  impeachment.  The  impeachment  of 
Governor  Sulzer,  without  the  examination  of  any  evidence, 
by  the  same  forces  which  exonerated  Stillwell  and  Cohalan 
may  make  the  process  of  impeachment  appear  to  be  a  farce. 
But  what  is  the  remedy?  Are  we  going  to  permit  the 
voters  to  hide  their  selfish  or  partisan  motives  behind  the 
secrecy  of  the  ballot  by  the  adoption  of  the  Recall?  Are 
we  going  to  make  it  less  desirable  for  courageous  men,  of 
convictions  and  character,  to  enter  public  life  by  subjecting 
them  to  such  insidious  public  ignominy?  The  remedy  is 
not  the  adoption  of  the  Recall,  but  by  the  improvement  of 
the  character  and  fitness  of  our  representatives  charged 
with  the  duty  of  impeaching  and  trying  impeachments. 
A  calm  and  deliberate  impeachment  and  trial  after  a  fair 
and  honest  inquiry  into  the  facts  by  an  Assembly  and 
Senate  made  up  of  men  of  such  known  integrity  and  honor 
as  to  inspire  confidence,  the  kind  of  confidencr"  which  the 
people  repose  in  our  Court  of  Appeals,  is  the  only  solu- 
tion of  this  grave  question.  The  difficulty  is  not  in  the 
process,  but  in  the  character  of  the  men  chosen  to  execute 
that  process.  The  remedy  is  not  in  the  subversion  of  the 
system,  but  in  the  election  of  men  of  higher  type  as  mem- 
bers of  the  lesnslature.  The  weakness  of  the  present  im- 
peachment is  the  lack  of  public  confidence  in  the  Assembly 
and  the  Senate.     Improve  the  character  of  both  of  tliese 


r.o 


bodies  to  a  degree  consistent  with  the  tremendous  impor- 
tance of  their  constitutional  powers,  both  legislative  and 
political,  and  unlimited  powers  may  be  delegated  to  them 
with  safety. 

The  Republican  party  will  do  well  to  oppose  the  Recall, 
but  to  do  so  it  must  demostrate  its  sincerity  by  the  nomina- 
tion of  the  right  type  of  men,  particularly  for  the  Legis- 
lature, and  then  call  upon  the  decent  and  intelligent  public 
to  give  the  full  measure  of  support  which  such  a  policy  de- 
serves. And  in  furtherance  of  this  policy,  it  is  our  duty  to 
stand  for  an  honest  primary  and  election  law,  so  that 
proper  representatives  may  be  more  easily  nominated  and 
elected. 

It  is  my  judgment  that  better  representatives  can  be 
elected  under  either  a  convention  system  or  a  direct  pri- 
mary, provided  either  system  be  an  honest  and  fair  one,  and 
provided  the  public  generally  devote  themselves  more  seri- 
ously to  politics.  The  people  have  no  one  else  to  blame  than 
themselves  for  the  present  unsatisfactory  condition  in  pub- 
lic affairs.  Ko  business  can  be  run  in  anv  such  neglectful 
manner,  and  no  administration  can  be  expected  to  advance 
to  a  higher  planethan  the  average  public  spirit  of  the  elec- 
torate. It  is  the  experience  of  business  men  that  employees 
should  not  only  be  selected  with  care,  but  should  not  be 
subjected  to  temptation  to  shirk  or  to  be  dishonest.  It  is 
likewise  the  experience  of  governments  that  tlieir  employees 
should  be  selected  with  equal  care  and  be  kept  under  a 
watchful  eye  lest  weakness  and  opportunity  should  yield 
to  temptation.  Instead  of  permitting  our  young  men  to 
enter  public  life  upon  the  supposition  that  it  pays  to  be 
crooked,  we  need  to  speed  the  day  when  it  will  be  a  mat- 
ter of  public  recognition  that  it  pays  to  be  honest,  and  that 
a  man  cannot  select  a  better,  cleaner,  more  wholesome  oc- 
cupation than  in  the  public  service. 

It  is  the  duty  of  the  Republican  party  to  encourage  hon- 
est service  by  its  representatives  in  public  life,  to  select 
men  first  upon  the  basis  of  fitness  and  willingness  to  per- 
form their  official  duties,  and  only  second  as  a  reward  for 
party  service,  to  make  it  a  rule  of  conduct  to  perform  pub- 
lic duties  with  an  eye  to  the  public  w^elfare  rather  than 
to  party  expediency.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  Republican  party 
to  use  its  best  efforts  to  reform  our  primary  and  election 
laws,  to  give  to  the  voter  an  honest  measure  for  the  fullest 

61 


self-expression  and  give  every  candidate  a  fair  opportunity 
to  cope  with  every  other  candidate  either  in  his  party  pri- 
mary or  at  the  election.  Until  that  is  done  there  will  be 
no  cessation  of  the  clamor  for  such  reform,  and  there  should 
be  none.  We  have  never  had  an  honest  and  fair  conven- 
tion system,  and  we  have  not  to-day  an  honest  and  fair  di- 
rect nomination  system.  I  am  frank  to  confess  that  I  have 
not  lost  my  confidence  in  the  convention  system.  I  believe 
it  is  the  abuse  of  it  which  has  brought  it  into  disfavor. 
However  that  may  be,  we  have  undertaken  to  experiment 
with  the  direct  primary,  and  I  am  satisfied  that  we  should 
give  it  a  fair  and  genuine  trial. 

We  have  no  genuine  direct  nominations  law  at  the  pres- 
ent time.  We  all  know  it.  Under  the  name  of  reform, 
aimed  at  the  bosses,  this  State  has  imposed  statutory  boss- 
ism  upon  the  voters  of  all  parties.  Although  the  theory  of 
direct  nominations  was  that  every  advantage  to  organiza- 
tion should  be  removed,  under  the  present  law  the  voters 
of  a  party  are  compelled  to  surrender  to  existing  party 
committees  the  right  to  perpetuate  themselves,  the  right  to 
name  the  official  primary  ticket  by  committee  designation, 
the  right  to  the  exclusive  use  of  the  party  emblem  on  the 
primary  ballot,  the  right  to  have  the  first  or  preferential 
column  for  committee  candidates,  the  exclusive  right  to  use 
the  party  funds,  and  in  addition  an  almost  prohibitive  num- 
ber of  signatures  are  required  upon  independent  petitions. 
In  other  words,  the  committees  are  permitted  to  make  the 
regular  nominations,  and  then  those  nominations  are 
hedged  round  about  with  all  kinds  of  fortifications  which 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  surmount. 

No  man  is  entitled  to  call  himself  the  regular  candi- 
date under  the  theory  of  direct  nominations.  Every  candi- 
date running  for  the  same  office  should  come  in  on  the 
same  level  with  every  other  candidate.  The  organization 
is  entitled  only  to  the  numerical  strength  of  its  supporters. 
To  permit  it  to  designate  the  regular  candidate,  to  have 
the  exclusive  right  to  use  the  party  emblem,  the  first  col- 
umn or  any  preferential  place  on  the  ballot,  the  party 
funds,  or  to  have  any  other  preference  is  certainly  an  un- 
fair discrimination. 

The  Republican  members  of  the  Legislature  stood  firmly 
for  all  these  reforms  throughout  both  the  regular  and  ex- 
traordinary sessions.    Our  efforts  were  defeated  in  every 

62 


instance  by  the  Democratic  majority.  The  election 
and  primary  law  has  been  left  practically  untouched,  due 
to  the  unwillingness  of  the  Democratic  majority  to  amend 
in  any  intelligent  or  honest  respect,  and  the  uncompromis- 
ing attitude  of  the  Governor  in  refusing  to  accept  Kepub- 
lican  votes  upon  the  only  basis  of  honorable  compromise 
open  to  them,  namely,  the  retention  of  the  State  convention 
in  accordance  with  the  distinct  Republican  platform 
pledge.  Our  posititon  was  a  clean-cut  and  honest  one.  I 
even  introduced  in  the  extraordinary  session  a  bill  which 
was  word  for  word  identical  with  the  Governor's  bill,  with 
the  exception  of  abolishing  the  State  convention,  and 
caused  to  be  introduced  a  bill  providing  for  a  preferential 
primary  for  State  officers  with  pledged  delegates  to  the 
State  convention,  but  the  Governor  would  not  permit  the 
compromise. 

The  attitude  of  the  Governor  indicates  that  he  wanted 
an  issue  and  not  a  real  direct  primary  law.  We  asked 
him  to  correct  the  vicious  features  of  the  present  system 
and  submit  to  the  people  this  fall  the  issue  of  the  retention 
or  abolishment  of  the  State  canvention,  because  our  pledge 
distinctly  bound  us  upon  that  subject.  We  are  now  met 
in  convention,  and  we  submit  that  the  question  is  at  issue  in 
the  State,  and  we  ask  you  for  further  instructions.  Even 
those  who  want  to  see  the  State  convention  eliminated  can- 
not help  admiring  our  manly  stand  in  conformity  with  our 
platform,  which  is  better  than  all  the  temporary  applause 
obtained  by  truckling  to  cheap  and  disorderly  popularity. 
It  was  not  our  duty  to  question  the  wisdom  of  the  distinct 
pledge  we  had  made  to  the  people.  It  was  our  duty  to  abide 
by  that  pledge,  to  encourage  confidence  in  our  fidelity  and 
to  await  the  decision  of  this  convention  as  to  whether  we 
shall  change  our  attitude  in  the  session  of  1914.  To  do 
otherwise  was  to  be  disorderly  as  well  as  dishonest,  and 
would  have  served  only  to  intensify  the  feeling  in  the  pub- 
lic mind  already  too  prevalent  that  platforms  mean  nothing 
but  empty  pretence. 

The  Republican  minority  has  made  an  earnest  effort 
throughout  the  session  to  take  a  positive  rather  than  a 
negative  position.  We  have  tried  to  be  right  rather  than 
strive  for  disorderly  popularity.  We  have  tried  to  be  cour- 
ageous and  not  cowardly  and  to  give  meaning  and  char- 
acter to  the  Republican  party  in  order  that  when  victory 

63 

mumm 


comes  it  will  be  a  victory  of  intelligence.  We  tried  to  im- 
prove our  legislative  methods  through  a  legislative  investi- 
gation. We  made  an  effort  to  improve  the  quality  of  legis- 
lation by  the  passage  of  a  bill  substituting  a  corps  of  legis- 
lative experts  in  the  place  of  inexperienced  and  almost  use- 
less assistants  under  our  present  method.  We  offered 
amendments  to  the  rules  intended  to  invite  the  utmost  pub- 
lic confidence  by  opening  committee  sessions  to  the  public 
view  and  compelling  the  votes  of  the  committeemen  to  be 
entered  upon  the  journal.  We  likewise  endeavored  to  pro- 
vide for  the  establishment  of  the  budget  system  in  the  ad- 
ministration of  State  finance.  We  introduced  and  fought 
for  the  passage  of  bills  to  carry  out  the  pledges  of  the  Re- 
publican platform.  All  of  our  measures  were  defeated  by 
the  Democratic  majority. 

We  are  proud  to  compare  this  record  of  honest  and 
straightforward  endeavor  with  the  record  of  the  Demo- 
cratic administration,  which  entered  upon  its  duties  with  a 
pious  declaration  in  favor  of  rigid  economy  and  a  greater 
degree  of  efficiency,  and  which  now  must  apologize  for  a 
tremendous  increase  in  appropriations  and  a  demoraliza- 
tion never  known  before  in  this  State. 

The  State's  credit  was  made  to  suffer  by  the  wanton  at- 
tempt to  raid  the  sinking  funds  in  order  to  pretend  to  the 
taxpayers  that  the  burden  of  taxation  had  been  lightened. 
The  result  was  that  the  Comptroller  found  himself  unable 
to  market  the  bonds  of  the  State  at  41/0  per  cent,  interest, 
and  was  obliged  to  sell  the  State's  notes  for  |27,000,000 
at  a  higher  rate  of  interest  to  meet  pressing  obligations  for 
highway  and  canal  construction. 

The  new  Department  of  Efficiency  and  Economy  is  cost- 
ing the  State  an  appropriation  of  $275,000,  exclusive  of  the 
125,000  allowed  it  for  its  free  text-book  investigation,  in- 
formation as  to  which  could  have  been  obtained  from  the 
Education  Department  without  cost.  This  department 
serves  no  useful  purpose,  has  been  inefficiently  organized, 
is  a  gross  extravangance  rather  than  an  economy. 

The  State  capitol  repairs  have  become  a  notorious  scan- 
dal. The  estimated  waste  to  date  is  half  a  million  dollars. 
The  Democratic  majority  defeated  a  bill  introduced  by  the 
Republicans  requiring  these  repairs  to  be  completed  by 
competitive  contract,  which  would  have  eliminated  fur- 
ther waste  and  brought  about  a  speedier  completion  of  the 

64 


work,  which  lias  already  cost  over  three  millions  of  dol- 
lars. This  has  been  recommended  by  the  American  Insti- 
tute of  Architects,  the  Committee  of  Inquiry,  the  Executive 
Auditor  and  by  the  Governor,  but  to  no  avail,  save  that  the 
State  Architect  has  now  begun  advertising  for  bids,  on 
some  portions  of  the  work,  leaving  Callanan  and  Prescott 
"still  on  the  job." 

The  Public  Service  Commissions  organized  under  Gov- 
ernor Hughes  and  Eepublican  rule,  which  have  been  copied 
as  a  model  in  many  other  States,  are  demoralized,  due  to 
the  failure  of  Democratic  administrations  under  Governor 
Dix  and  Governor  Sulzer  to  appreciate  their  vast  impor- 
tance and  the  necessity  to  appoint  non-partisan  and  non- 
political  commissioners,  who  measure  up  to  the  qualifica- 
tions expected  when  the  salary  was  made  |15,000  a  year, 
and  which  the  best  interests  of  the  service  absolutely  re- 
quire. 

The  present  State  Board  of  Tax  Commissioners  has  been 
denounced  as  incompetent  by  the  New  York  Tax  Reform 
Association. 

The  Labor  Department,  reorganized  this  year  at  an  in- 
creased cost  of  half  a  million  dollars,  has  been  for  months 
without  a  responsible  head  and  is  demoralized  in  conse- 
quence of  the  quarrel  between  Democratic  factions  over 
the  patronage  of  the  department. 

Claimants  all  over  the  State  are  complaining  because 
the  Board  of  Claims,  which  w^as  created  in  1911  by  the 
abolishment  of  the  State  Court  of  Claims,  in  order  to  make 
offices  for  Democrats,  is  whollv  unable  to  take  care  of  its 
business  and  is  years  behind  with  its  work.  Moreover,  the 
veto  by  Governor  Sulzer  of  an  appropriation  of  |250,000 
to  settle  judgments  against  the  State  already  granted  by 
the  Board  of  Claims  defers  for  a  year  the  payment  of  the 
State's  acknowledged  debts. 

The  Governor's  veto  of  the  |600,000  appropriation  for 
the  elimination  of  grade  crossings  has  checked  important 
and  much-needed  improvements. 

Our  overcrowded  prisons  have  reached  a  condition 
shocking  to  the  conscience  of  the  State,  and  yet  there  has 
been  an  unwarranted  cessation  of  work  on  new  prisons 
begun  under  Republican  administration  in  anticipation  of 
approaching  necessity  for  larger  and  more  modern  accom- 
modations. 

65 


One  of  the  clearest  evidences  of  the  lack  of  plan  and 
foresight,  of  the  absence  of  settled  policy  and  of  the  general 
disorderly  conduct  of  the  present  Democratic  administra- 
tion, has  been  the  manner  in  which  both  Houses  of  the 
Legislature  have  utterly  failed  to  comprehend  the  dignity 
of  their  functions,  to  recognize  the  seriousness  of  the  busi- 
ness of  the  State  or  even  to  start  the  sessions  of  the  Houses 
within  hours  of  the  time  appointed  for  convening.  It  has 
become  the  settled  practice  for  the  Legislature  to  appoint 
eleven  o'clock  as  the  hour  for  convening,  keep  the  members 
waiting  from  two  to  twelve  hours  before  calling  them  to  or- 
der, without  giving  them  an  inkling  of  the  reason  for  the 
delay.  This  lack  of  discipline  and  orderly  procedure  has 
been  completely  demoralizing. 

An  examination  of  the  legislation  passed  and  approved 
by  the  Governor  demonstrates  clearly  the  lack  of  intelligent 
system,  for  we  find  a  number  of  laws  which  have  been 
passed  by  the  Legislature  and  received  Executive  approval 
which  have  nullified  laws  passed  earlier  in  the  session  by 
the  amendment  of  the  same  sections  of  the  Consolidated 
Laws  without  embracing  the  text  of  the  earlier  amend- 
ments. No  excuse  can  be  offered  for  such  reckless  ineffi- 
ciency. 

The  maladministration  of  the  highway  affairs  has  been 
conceded  by  everybody.  The  Republican  demand  for  a  re- 
turn to  a  non-political  highway  commission  as  originally 
created  under  Governor  Hughes  and  abolished  under  Gov- 
ernor Dix,  was  denied.  In  the  face  of  vigorous  Republican 
protest  the  department  was  reorganized  with  a  single- 
headed  commission.  Owing  to  the  quarrel  between  the 
Governor  and  his  party  in  the  Legislature  no  highway  com- 
missioner was  named  until  early  Summer.  Meanwhile 
nothing  was  done,  and  the  highways  of  the  State  suffered 
in  consequence.  The  new  commissioner  had  hardly  as- 
sumed office  when  the  factional  quarrel  over  patronage 
broke  out  afresh.  The  result  was  that  the  Highway  De- 
partment remained  utterly  demoralized,  and  when  the  Gov- 
ernor started  to  punish  by  criminal  prosecution  those  en- 
gaged in  corruption  he  was  so  hastily  and  audaciously 
impeached  as  to  shock  the  public  sense  of  fairness. 

I  believe  the  time  has  come  to  break  away  from  the 
artificiality  of  personal  controversy  in  which  everything  is 
subordinated  to  the  motive  to  "get"  somebody  and  to  begin 

66 


to  seriously  consider  issues  and  not  men,  orderly  govern- 
ment and  not  patronage.  Those  who  stand  for  the  kind 
of  government  which  culminated  in  the  impeachment  of 
Governor  Sulzer  may  linger  for  a  time,  but  from  the 
wounds  of  August  12,  1913,  they  will  never  recover.  This 
is  my  prediction,  and  if  the  impeachment  accomplishes  no 
other  purpose,  it  will  be  an  instrument  of  good  government. 
If,  in  the  midst  of  the  frenzy  which  it  has  caused  for  the 
moment,  there  is  a  party  which  can  keep  cool  and  deliber- 
ate, and  calmly  strive  to  lead  the  people  of  this  State  in  the 
path  of  "progress  with  order,"  which  was  the  most  signifi- 
cant declaration  of  our  Rochester  platform  in  1912,  that 
party  will  be  entitled  to  the  confidence  and  support  of  every 
voter,  irrespective  of  his  party  affiliations.  It  is  my  earnest 
hope  that  the  Republican  party,  with  new  courage  and 
idealism,  may  be  called  upon  to  be  that  instrument,  to  bring 
order  out  of  chaos,  to  heighten  respect  for  government, 
and  to  educate  the  people  to  a  greater  moral  responsibility. 


67 


Address  of  Hon.  Charles  S.  Whitman. 

The  Senate  Chamber  at  Albany  offers  a  spectacle  to  the 
people  of  this  State  and  of  this  Nation,  of  which  we  are 
not  altogether  proud,  but  which,  nevertheless,  to-day  is 
impressive  and  is  instructive.  Whatever  may  be  the  mer- 
its of  the  controversy,  however  unworthy  may  have  been 
the  motives  which  prompted  the  actions  of  those  respon- 
sible for  the  present  proceeding,  whatever  lack  there  may 
have  been  of  dignity  and  decorum,  and  even  of  sincerity, 
on  the  part  of  the  popular  legislative  body  of  this  State 
which  brought  the  indictment,  throughout  New  York  to- 
day there  is  manifest  confidence,  trust  and  faith  that  the 
People  of  the  State  of  New  York  are  going  to  be  treated 
fairly  and  that  the  man,  whom  the  people  have  elected 
Governor  of  the  State  of  New  York,  is  going  to  be  treated 
fairly,  that  justice  and  right  and  law  are  going  to  prevail, 
that  the  truth  is  going  to  come  out,  that  after  all  it  is  a 
matter  of  little  concern  to  the  People  of  the  State  who 
brings  these  charges,  but  it  is  a  matter  of  vital  concern 
that  it  should  be  determined  whether  these  charges  be  true 
or  not.  Whatever  suspicion  may  have  existed  in  the  pub- 
lic mind  as  to  the  integrity  of  the  Court  of  Impeachment, 
which,  in  the  last  analysis  must  pass  upon  this  case,  seems 
to  have  been  dis]ielled,  and  the  very  fact  that  ten  millions 
of  people  at  a  time  like  this  are  confident  that  the  men,  a 
small  minority  of  the  Court  of  Impeachment,  whom  they 
have  elevated  to  the  Bench  of  the  Court  of  Appeals,  are  go- 
ing to  dominate  and  control  and  act  as  their  consciences 
direct  them  to  act,  and  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  this 
State,  is  no  mean  tribute  to  a  tribunal  which  from  its 
organization  has  held  itself  not  only  above  corruption,  but 
above  suspicion,  too.  The  presence  of  the  Presiding  Jus- 
tice, creating  by  his  very  being  there  the  atmosphere  in 
which  the  trial  is  proceeding,  and  who  embodies  and  rep- 
resents in  himself  all  that  is  great  in  the  traditions  of  the 
American  Bench,  justifies  the  conviction  everywhere  mani- 
fested that  no  wrong  can  be  done. 

The  People  of  the  State  are  called  upon  this  year  to 

68 


elect  the  membership  in  this  historic  Court,  and  the  Re- 
publican party,  mindful  of  its  most  solemn  duty,  is  by  its 
chosen  representatives  here  assembled  to  offer  to  the  Peo- 
ple of  its  best,  believing,  as  it  does  believe,  that  it  has 
among  its  members  those  wIk),  by  disposition  and  learning 
and  large  experience,  are  the  best  fitted  that  can  be  found 
within  the  boundaries  of  our  State,  to  render  to  the  People 
the  service  and  to  perform  the  duties  so  well  rendered  and 
so  nobly  performed  by  those  who  have  gone  before  them. 

The  Republican  party  is  needed  in  this  Nation  and  in 
this  State.  Its  opportunity  was  never  more  manifest  or 
greater  than  now.  Wliatever  defeats  it  may  have  suffered, 
whatever  mist-akes  it  mav  have  made,  however  slow  some 
of  its  leaders  may  have  been  to  respond  to  its  best  senti- 
ment, its  vast  membership,  its  enthusiastic  supporters  .are 
loyal  to  its  traditions  and  are  confident  that  in  the  end  its 
appeal  to  the  people  will  not  be  in  vain.  It  does  not  seek 
to  lay  its  hands  upon  the  Judiciary;  it  does  not  ask  those 
whom  it  elevates  to  power  to  make  office  a  political  asset. 
It  asks  no  pledges  of  its  candidates,  but  it  pledges  to  them 
its  sup]X)rt  and  its  abiding  trust.  It  believes  in  the  judge, 
who  sees  neither  friend  nor  foe,  who,  in  the  discharge 
of  his  official  dutj',  recognizes  neither  gain  nor  loss  to  his 
party  or  to  himself.  We  have  given  such  men  to  the  serv- 
ice of  the  State  over  and  over  again.  We  have  united  with 
others  to  continue  on  the  bench  those  who,  during  years 
pf  usefulness  have  demonstrated  their  patriotism  and  their 
worth.  The  Republican  party  has  never  failed  the  people 
in  its  selection  of  those  who,  in  the  last  analysis,  must  in- 
terpret and  determine  the  law. 

A  defect  in  a  system  of  jurisprudence  is  not  demon- 
strated by  the  failure  of  some  official  incumbent  to  per- 
form his  duty.  Just  what  the  expression  "recall  of 
judges"  or  "recall  of  judicial  decisions,"  may  mean,  de- 
l^ends,  it  would  seem,  very  largely  upon  the  opinion  of  the 
individual  whom  you  may  happen  to  hear  advocating  the 
recall,  and  the  time  and  the  place  of  its  advocacy,  and  it 
is  hardly  fair  to  charge  any  one  individual  with  the  ex- 
treme notions  and  doctrines  advocated  by  the  unreason- 
ing, the  overzealous  and  the  selfseeking,  for  whom  he  may 
be  in  no  way  responsible,  but  the  Republican  party  has  set 
its  face  against  any  change  in  our  system  of  jurisprudence, 
which  change  would  restrict  or  would  hamper  tlie  free- 

69 


dom  and  independence  of  the  bench,  or  which  would  im- 
pair the  vitality  of  judicial  decisions,  or  which  would 
render  other  than  final  the  determinations  on  constitu- 
tional questions  of  the  nation's  court  of  last  resort. 

We  have  no  fear  for  the  future  of  the  Republican 
party.  It  will  win  again  because  it  will  deserve  to  win. 
Its  leadership  in  the  future  will  inspire  popular  respect 
and  confidence  because  it  will  deserve  popular  respect  and 
confidence.  Those  who,  by  instinct  and  training  and  char- 
acter are  naturally  allied  with  us,  will  be  found  again 
championing  Republican  principles  and  Republican  can- 
didates, because  those  principles  and  those  candidates 
will  appeal  to  the  sense  and  the  patriotism  of  the  best  citi- 
zenship of  the  land. 

And  tliis  splendid  gathering  of  our  party  to-night, 
representing  as  it  does  a  vast  electorate  desirous  of  better 
things  than  we  have  seen  during  the  few  years  past  in 
this  Empire  State,  is  something  more  than  a  mere  conven- 
tion, whose  duty  it  is  to  designate  candidates  for  the  Court 
of  Appeals,  serious,  solemn  and  important  as  that  duty  is. 
This  is  the  public  demonstration  and  declaration,  if  you 
please,  that  whatever  differences  exist  within  our  ranks, 
and  whatever  contests  may  come  at  home,  which  must  be 
settled  by  our  own  members,  we  are  undaunted  and  un- 
afraid ;  we  are  ready  to  welcome  all  who  will  support  with 
us  the  men  and  the  measures  in  nation  and  in  State,  of 
which  all  good  citizens  can  approve,  and  that  we  are  de- 
termined to  prove  by  the  conduct  of  those  whom  we  place 
in  power  the  sincerity  of  our  belief  in  the  doctrine  enun- 
ciated by  a  Republican  president,  years  ago,  "He  serves  his 
party  most  who  serves  his  country  best." 


70 


ylord  Bros.,  Inc. 

Stockton,  Calif. 
f1.  Reg.  U.S.  Pat.  Off. 


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